SWL 2026 Divisional Round Recap, Sunday August 23
Both series ended in two. That is where the similarity stops. One of them was a team scoring in double digits twice. The other was two afternoons of nobody being able to hit anything, decided by four runs total.
I play on one of these teams, so read the Wiffle House section with that in mind.
#1 Wiffle House def. #4 Swingdome, 2-0
G1: SD 0, WH 10 (5 inn.) | G2: WH 13, SD 2 (5 inn.)
The thing I keep coming back to is the zero.
Wiffle House had allowed sixteen runs in sixteen regular season games, which was already the number everyone quoted. Then Sunday happened and Swingdome put up nothing at all in Game 1. Five innings, five hits, no runs. It is the only shutout thrown in this postseason, and the second time this year Wiffle House has held Swingdome to nothing.
Swingdome walked into this with the one thing no other team had, which was evidence. They lost 1-0 on August 9. That game was the whole case for them, and I said so in the preview. Then they scored zero and two.
One correction from the preview: I called Jimmy Froio's plans for Alex Hatch the most interesting decision in the bracket, and Hatch did not appear in either game. That one is on me.
What Froio actually did was start Nick Ludwig in Game 1 and then take the ball himself in Game 2 with the season on the line. The Wiffle House lineup strung together fourteen hits against Game 1 pitching and did not slow down in Game 2. Froio wore every inning of it, having watched what happened the game before. There is a version of this where a captain hands that off. He did not.
Swingdome finish 10-6 after playing more postseason wiffle than anyone in the field, and the 1-0 in August is still the best game anybody played against Wiffle House this year. That has not stopped being true.
Wiffle House advance to the World Series at 18-0.
#2 100% Real Juice def. #3 Sheryl Crows, 2-0
G1: SHRL 1, 100 2 | G2: 100 4, SHRL 1
This was the series I could not call, and it turned out to be the best baseball of the day.
Game 1 finished 2-1, and I want to be precise about how, because the box score is one of the strangest I have entered. 100% Real Juice won that game with one hit. One. Drew Helgren threw five innings for the Crows and gave up exactly one hit, and lost, which should be impossible. The Juice at bats made it possible: they never chased, drew ten walks, and cashed exactly two of them in. Nobody could square Helgren up and nobody had to. Aaron Hunter went the distance on the other side, four hits, one run, eight strikeouts.
A team whose entire identity all season was singles and walks, four doubles and zero triples in sixteen games, won a playoff game without needing the singles.
Game 2 was 4-1 and closer than that. Adam Brickett struck out twelve in six innings. Evan Gray struck out twelve in six innings. Both of them. Gray also went 3-for-4 at the plate, which meant he was the best hitter on his team in a game his team lost by three.
The Crows scored two runs across two games, and that is a credit to the Juice arms: among Brickett's twelve strikeouts was the job he did on Jeff Hanschmann, a .477 hitter with 8 home runs this season, kept off the board entirely.
Sheryl Crows finish 11-5 with a Wild Card sweep and then that. Losing two games by a combined four runs is a different kind of ending than getting run out of the building, and I do not think anybody on that roster needs it explained to them.
100% Real Juice advance to the World Series.
The Leaning Golden Man, Sunday August 30
#2 100% Real Juice at #1 Wiffle House.
Higher seed hosts Games 1 and 3. These two met once in the regular season, back on July 5, and Wiffle House took both. The opener was 12-0. So the last time these teams played it was all Wiffle House, and the Juice arrive a different team than the one that took the field in July.
Eighteen and zero, eighteen runs allowed in eighteen games. I am not going to pretend I know how that goes.
See you Sunday.
@seattlewiffle | 2026 Postseason
