C’s rack up win, record
Sellout crowd pushes season’s attendance to 164,461
Vancouver Canadians’ fans set another attendance record this season. As a treat, the club may offer up some bonus action at Nat Bailey Stadium.
The Canadians remain in the Northwest League playoff hunt after beating the Boise Hawks 5-1 Sunday in their final home game of the regular season. They’re off Monday, and wrap up league play with a five-game visit to the Yakima Bears (14-18) starting Tuesday.
Vancouver (20-14) remains tied with the Eugene Emeralds in the race for the West Division second-half pennant. Eugene rallied for three runs in the eighth inning Sunday night to beat the Tri-City Dust Devils 4-2 and keep pace with the C’s. The Emeralds, a San Diego Padres farm club, start a fivegame home set with the Spokane Indians on Monday, meaning that they will be sitting and watching Saturday when the C’s play their final game.
Vancouver, who are in their second year as the short-season Single-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays, are the reigning Northwest League champions.
The Canadians’ crowd of 5,157 Sunday was their 13th sellout of the campaign and pushed Vancouver’s season attendance at the Nat to 164,461, bettering the previous single-year mark of 162,162 set last year. And that’s despite missing one game to a rainout.
Vancouver’s attendance has improved five straight seasons, from 129,073 in 2008.
Right-hander Javier Avendano, who was named the team’s most valuable player in a ceremony Saturday night, recorded the win Sunday out of the bullpen, twirling five scoreless innings in relief of Roberto Osuna.
Avendano scattered four hits, walked one and struck out seven en route to improving to 7-1 and dropping his earned run average to 1.23.
Right fielder Matt Newman sparked the offence, going 3-for4 with a home run and three runs batted in. Newman, who played his fair share of high-intensity games at NCAA powerhouse Arizona State, was also solid defensively, holding a couple of sharply hit balls to singles by taking good routes.
Newman doubled to right on the first pitch from Boise reliever SuMin Jung in the fifth inning, plating Art Charles and Balbino Fuenmayor to make it 4-1. Fuenmayor had an RBI single up the middle earlier in the frame.
Newman made it 5-1 by homering to right off Tyler Bremer in the seventh.
Charles had put Vancouver on the board with a mammoth homer down the right-field line off Felix Pena on the first pitch of the fourth inning. The C’s staff said the ball landed on the roof of the gymnastics facility located across the parking lot entrance.
The Hawks threatened in the ninth against Avendano, as Marco Hernandez led off with a single and Wilson Contreras walked, but Arik Sikula came on and induced a popout in foul ground, a fly out to right field and a strikeout for his eighth save.
Boise, the farm team of the Chicago Cubs, opened the scoring off Osuna in the third, Darien Martin coming home from third on a sacrifice fly by Stephen Bruno.
Osuna, the 17-year-old sensation from Mexico, gave up one run on three hits and one walk while striking out one in three innings of work.