The Charleston RiverDogs are ready to rumble Tuesday in postseason play for the fourth summer in a row in pursuit of another Single-A championship in the Carolina League.
“The team has once again completed an impressive turnaround in the second half and made the final games of the regular season very meaningful,” RiverDogs President and General Manager Dave Echols said in a statement.
“The playoff atmosphere created by our fans during the last three seasons has truly been second to none.”
First division playoff game is in Charleston
The first of the three-game playoff series will be 7:05 p.m. Tuesday in Charleston against the Kannapolis Cannon Ballers with tickets available from $13 to $23. The playoff opener will feature $1 beers, thanks to Budweiser, according to the RiverDogs. The first 1,000 fans also will receive a T-shirt courtesy of Gildan and Nucor Steel Berkeley.
Game Two – and three, if necessary – will be in Kannapolis on Thursday and Friday, respectively.
The Cannon Ballers, an affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, finished the first half of the Carolina League South with a 41-25 record. The RiverDogs, an affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, ended the first half in the division cellar with a 27-38 record.
But in the second half of the Carolina League South, the RiverDogs woke up, leading its division with a 41-23 record – eight games ahead of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans. Kannapolis, meanwhile, finished in fourth place with a 29-35 record – 12 games behind the RiverDogs.
The RiverDogs, 68-61 for the year, finish the regular season at 5:05 p.m. Sunday with a game in Columbia against the Fireflies (68-62).
2023 season featured a three-peat
Last year, the RiverDogs won its third-straight Carolina League championship after a 99-year dry spell for the team. And last year, like this year, found the team starting out slowly – with the worst record in its division for the first half before soaring to a 39-26 record in the second half.
“We had a young group, a talented group, but we had a lot of things to work on and get better at,” manager Sean Smedley said last year. “It’s a testament to the guys — they went out and got better each day. They started learning themselves and learned how to play this game at a high level, and they ended up winning the championship.”
In 2021, the RiverDogs nailed their first championship win in almost a century. In 2022, the team touted its most dominant record — 88-44, the best in all of professional baseball that year.
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