Biscuits clinch another playoff berth behind Auer's blast

Mason Auer hit a two-run homer to propel the Montgomery Biscuits to a 2-1 victory over Biloxi and clinch a Southern League playoff bid for an eighth-straight season. (File Photo)

By TIM GAYLE

Cole Wilcox held Biloxi to three hits over five innings and Mason Auer hit a two-run home run in the fourth to give the Montgomery Biscuits the Southern League South Division second-half title in a 2-1 victory over the Shuckers at MGM Park on Saturday night.

The Biscuits spent the last 24 days on top of the South Division standings, but were locked in a tight battle with Biloxi for the last playoff spot that wasn’t settled until the next-to-last day of the regular season.

The Biscuits and Shuckers will play the regular-season finale on Sunday before the Biscuits return home to play host to the Pensacola Blue Wahoos, the first-half winner, in a best-of-three series that starts Tuesday at Riverwalk Stadium at 6:30 p.m.

After a day off, the second game in the Southern League Divisional Series will be played on Thursday at Blue Wahoos Park at 6:05 p.m. A third game, if necessary, will be played on Friday in Pensacola.

The winner of the Montgomery-Pensacola series and the winner of the Chattanooga-Tennessee series will meet on Sunday for the first game in the Southern League Championship Series.

Wilcox surrendered a leadoff home run to Isaac Collins in the bottom of the first, but allowed just two more hits over the first five innings of Saturday’s game. Auer put the Biscuits ahead in the fourth after Carson Williams was hit by a pitch, sending a shot over the left center field wall for his 11th home run of the season and his 50th and 51st runs batted in.

Auer’s blast helped the Biscuits win one of the more exciting pennant races in recent years as Montgomery’s 24-day tenure as the South Division leader was only possible by winning 18 of the last 21 games because Biloxi had won 14 of the last 20.

Montgomery, at 79-58, has the most wins in the Southern League and trail only the Eastern League’s Somerset (83-53) for the most wins in Double-A. The Biscuits’ second-half record of 43-25 is the best in Double-A and trails only Triple-A Durham (44-24) for the best second-half record in all of minor league baseball. 

The hot streak allowed the Biscuits to clinch their eighth consecutive trip to the playoffs and 11th playoff berth since moving to Montgomery from Orlando in 2004. Over the last eight seasons, the Biscuits won both halves of the divisional race in 2019, while winning the second-half divisional title seven times. 

While that’s a good formula for entering the playoffs on a hot streak, it hasn’t helped the Biscuits, which lost the divisional series in six of the last seven seasons, including last year’s loss to the Pensacola Blue Wahoos. In 2021, the Double-A playoffs, as it was known then, featured the top two teams in the championship series in a COVID-shortened playoff format.