Having survived the play-in game over the despised Surprise Zombies, Santa Fe advanced to face Federal League South champs Sewell.

The teams are very evenly-matched, with SFE having won 100 and SEW winning 97 on the season, although SFE won the season series 8-4.

Game One - Due to computer issues that resulted in off-and-on Net Play through 6 innings followed by Strat refusing to let us reconnect, the exact particulars of this game have been lost to time.  Sewell battered Paul Maholm and got a good-enough effort from Jake Peavy, taking the series lead with a 7-4 victory.

Game Two - In a classic battle of superstar pitchers, both Halladay and Sabathia.....were completely bombed into oblivion, exiting the game within 3 innings.  SFE closer Fernando Rodney was unexpectedly brought in to try to salvage a bases-loaded none-out situation, which he largely did, and then stayed in to pitch three innings.  That was enough to swing the game for the Geckos, as they evened the series with a 10-7 victory.

Game Three - Santa Fe was excited to get ace Wainwright back after the play-in game....but they really shouldn't have been.  Sewell utterly obliterated Wainwright, reducing him to a fetal state, rocking quietly back and forth.  By the time he was removed in the 4th inning, SEW was up 10-1 and the game was long over.  After some meaningless nonsense (including scoreless innings from Carlos Marmol and Kevin Correia), Sewell won 12-5.

Game Four - Finally, some pitching.  Sewell took the lead with a 2-out solo homer by Konerko in the 5th inning, and they removed Peavy after 5 scoreless in favor of ultimate relief weapon Kris Medlen.  Unfortunately for Medlen, the hitters get results on their cards roughly half the time, and Bautista tied the game at 2 with a blast in the sixth inning.  It was still 2-2 in the bottom of the 9th when Napoli and Uggla got on to start the inning and lead Sewell to turn to top closer Kimbrel...who walked Kearns, struck out Rasmus, and then walked in the winning run.  Ouch.  SFE tied up the series with the 3-2 win.

Game Five - It would be unkind to say much about this game.  Sewell led most of the game until Santa Fe keyed a rally off of a 2-base error by Jeff "c2e1" Mathis, taking us to extra innings, where Kimbrel served up a game-losing 2-run homer to Papi.

Game Six - Halladay was terrible again for the Geckos, but Medlen's sole start of the series didn't go according to plan either, as he gave up 4 runs in 7+ innings.  But that was enough for a lead, and Kimbrel pitched the last 1 1/3 for his second save and a 6-4 Sewell win.

Game Seven - With both teams ravaged by PA limitations, the late innings of this game looked like they would be very interesting.  But it turned out to not be the case, as Papi notched a Grand Slam in the first inning and Sewell never got its offense going against Wainwright this time, and SFE collected a relatively easy 7-1 victory to take the series.

That was an extremely even series that could've been won by either team, and honestly probably should've been won by Sewell in light of the game 5 travesty.  Big Papi was MVP, hitting .286 / .444 / .929 with 3 HR and 7 RBI, including 2 essentially game-winning hits.

Sewell actually outhit Santa Fe fairly substantially for the series, due in part to the effect of the Game 3 blowout and in part to leaving a metric ton of runners on base (70 for the series, compared to 48 for SFE).

Former Gecko Hunter Pence was the biggest bat for SEW, hitting .370 with 2 HR and 10 RBI, although almost all of the damage was done in the first 4 games.

The series was completely dominated by offense (of course, both teams play in substantial hitters' parks) - the only SP to finish with an ERA under 5.70 were Medlen (who still wasn't good in his start but had lots of great relief IP) and Burnett (in his 1 start).

The best news for the winner of the TIN/BRK series is that Mike Napoli managed to rupture his spleen in his very last PA of the series, and will be out until game 6 of the FLCS.