{"id":255643,"date":"2025-09-26T07:58:26","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T07:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/255643\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T07:58:26","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T07:58:26","slug":"jacksonville-jumbo-shrimp-win-international-league-baseball-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/255643\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp win International League baseball title"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"play\"<\/p>\n

VyStar Ballpark: See what’s new at home of Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp<\/p>\n

Owner of the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, Ken Babby, talked about the $31.5 million in renovations done at VyStar Ballpark and Bragan Field MondaycMarch 24, 2025 in Jacksonville, Fla. Opening day is April 1st against the Worcester Red Sox.<\/p>\n

(This story has been updated to add new information and to add a photo or video.)<\/p>\n

It took the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp<\/a> six months and 152 games to reach the International League season finale.<\/a><\/p>\n

It took only one inning to start them on the road to end the city’s 57-year wait for a Triple-A league championship.<\/p>\n

The final strike. The champagne. The trophy. The exultant ballplayers on the Florida grass. At long last, crustacean jubilation.<\/p>\n

“Being able to be a part of this is just incredible,” designated hitter Matthew Etzel said.<\/p>\n

Unleashing a batting barrage in the first inning and withstanding a nerve-racking rally in the last, the Jumbo Shrimp sealed Northeast Florida’s long-awaited Triple-A trophy, beating the Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders 7-4 in the deciding Game 3 of the International League Championship Series on Sept. 25 at VyStar Ballpark.<\/p>\n

Adam Mazur delivered a sterling start and Etzel added to his postseason highlight collection with three RBI, one day after his homer and double in the backs-to-the-wall Game 2 helped Jacksonville keep its season alive.<\/p>\n

Already victors in the first-half season standings<\/a>, the Jumbo Shrimp now make way for more hardware in the trophy cabinet within the club press box: the city’s first International League championship since 1968, when the old Jacksonville Mets won it all.<\/p>\n

“To be able to do this on our home field was incredible,” manager David Carpenter said.<\/p>\n

JUMBO SHRIMP ROCK ROOKIE<\/p>\n

In Jacksonville’s biggest ballgame in two generations, the Jumbo Shrimp lit up the scoreboard before the sun fully disappeared behind the stands along the third-base line.<\/p>\n

Against 22-year-old Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz, a pitcher long on arm talent (selected this week by Baseball America as the New York Yankees<\/a>‘ minor league pitcher of the year) but short on high-minors experience (one career Triple-A appearance), Jacksonville rolled out a five-run flurry.<\/p>\n

“There were certain parts of the plate that we wanted to work with,” Carpenter said. “He was walking us and we were taking good pitches, putting up really good at-bats.”<\/p>\n

Rodriguez-Cruz yielded four hits and two walks, threw 38 pitches and couldn’t make it out of the first, setting the stage for a parade of six visiting pitchers.<\/p>\n

Designated hitter Etzel got the ball rolling with a two-run double to the right field gap, Jared Serna legged out an infield grounder to bring home another run, Jack Winkler brought home two more on a crisp single and in the blink of an eye, the Jumbo Shrimp had placed a 5 on the left-field scoreboard.<\/p>\n

“I was a little tight, a little bit nervous the first game,” said Etzel, who packed a 1.154 OPS for the series. “But I just went out and played loose, to have fun, to stick to my approach.”<\/p>\n

MAZUR MAGNIFICENT<\/p>\n

That early explosion was all the support needed for the Jumbo Shrimp’s Mazur.<\/p>\n

Mazur started against Scranton and is now part of No. 1 in the league thanks to five excellent innings, limiting the visitors to three hits and two walks while striking out three. It was his first game without allowing a run since June 24 against Nashville.<\/p>\n

Newly returned to Jacksonville after a month in the majors with the Miami Marlins<\/a>, Mazur picked the perfect time for his first win since July.<\/p>\n

With help from a 5-4-3 double play here or a Jared Serna diving stop there, the right-hander mowed down the RailRiders through the first five innings. He hit choppy waters only in the first but escaped, forcing the visitors to strand runners on the corners.<\/p>\n

“I was getting myself in good spots, getting ahead of the hitters pretty quick tonight and putting them away when we had a chance to,” he said.<\/p>\n

TENSE FINISH<\/p>\n

Up 7-0 in the final frame. Easy victory, right? Wrong.<\/p>\n

The RailRiders, who mustered only three hits in the first eight innings against a near-flawless relay of Mazur, Dale Stanavich, Christian Roa and William Kempner, almost derailed Jacksonville’s hopes at the end.<\/p>\n

The second-ranked IL club in team OPS rallied for four runs in the ninth against reliever Freddy Tarnok: Double, single, single, walk. Then, after a pair of outs, another single and two more walks.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre’s potential tying run occupied first base, with No. 3 hitter Jose Rojas at the plate and the 6-7, 240-pound Spencer Jones on deck.<\/p>\n

But 25 years after ninth-inning heartbreak in the Double-A Southern League playoffs against West Tenn, Jacksonville survived this time. Josh White fanned Rojas to cue a night of celebration at the ballpark for the home crowd of 4,540.<\/p>\n

HISTORIC ANNIVERSARY<\/p>\n

The Jumbo Shrimp’s triumph marked a historic anniversary on the diamond, 63 years to the day after Jacksonville last held a winner-take-all home game for a league championship.<\/p>\n

On Sept. 25, 1962, the Atlanta Crackers denied the Jacksonville Suns 3-1 in Game 7 of the International League finals, led by a five-hitter from the battery of future big leaguers Ray Sadecki and Tim McCarver. This time, the winning finish belonged to Jacksonville.<\/p>\n

One more goal remains: As International League champions, the Jumbo Shrimp travel to Las Vegas for a single-game overall class championship at 10 p.m. Sept. 27 against the Las Vegas Aviators, champions of the Pacific Coast League.<\/p>\n

“Incredible win all the way around,” Carpenter said. “Can’t wait to take this one to Vegas.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VyStar Ballpark: See what’s new at home of Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp Owner of the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, Ken…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":255644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,591,11300,3188,723,7310,19281,19275,46711,380,1286,635,2228,50,450,1457,1451,132700,132699,132701,19276,62,1458,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,2386,636],"class_list":{"0":"post-255643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-eastside","11":"tag-fl","12":"tag-florida","13":"tag-jacksonville","14":"tag-jacksonville-jumbo-shrimp","15":"tag-jumbo","16":"tag-marlins","17":"tag-miami","18":"tag-miami-marlins","19":"tag-new","20":"tag-new-york-yankees","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-overall","23":"tag-overall-positive","24":"tag-positive","25":"tag-railriders","26":"tag-scranton-wilkes-barre","27":"tag-scranton-wilkes-barre-railriders","28":"tag-shrimp","29":"tag-sports","30":"tag-sports-news","31":"tag-united-states","32":"tag-united-states-of-america","33":"tag-unitedstates","34":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","35":"tag-us","36":"tag-usa","37":"tag-yankees","38":"tag-york"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115269540646024047","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}