The starting pitchers for tonight’s winner-take-all Game 5 of the Midwest League Championship Series have been revealed.
The Cedar Rapids Kernels will send RHP Randy LeBlanc to the mound. He went 9-5 with a 3.03 ERA, 69 strikeouts and 28 walks in 89 innings (33 games/five starts) during the regular season. This is his second year as a professional ballplayer after being drafted by the Minnesota Twins in 2014.
Randy LeBlanc on the mound for the Kernels in Beloit earlier this year. (Photo by Craig Wieczorkiewicz/The Midwest League Traveler)
The visiting West Michigan Whitecaps will counter with RHP Ross Seaton, an eight-year veteran of the minor leagues. He was drafted by the Houston Astros in 2008; this is his first year in the Detroit Tigers organization. He spent most of the regular season with West Michigan, going 11-8 with a 3.73 ERA, 86 strikeouts and 16 walks in 132.2 innings (21 starts) for the Whitecaps.
Ross Seaton pitching for the Whitecaps in May. (Photo by Kevin Sielaff/MLive.com)
First pitch is scheduled for 6:35 p.m. CT. I’ll be live-tweeting the game on Twitter. If you don’t use Twitter, you can still see my most recent tweets along the right side of this website.
As a refresher course on how the series got this far, here are links to my stories and photos from the first four games:
Kernels shut out Whitecaps to win Game 1 of MWL finals
Four-run inning enough for Whitecaps to even series
The Midwest League Traveler 