Sunday evening saw the BBL Tier 2 division playoffs draw to a close, with the final series following the pattern that most of the tier’s matchups established: a two-game rout by the higher-seeded team, this time the Boston Red Sox trumping the Crazy Wombats in a particularly high-scoring series.

The two teams both primarily focus on including a lot of power in their lineup. The Red Sox are stacked with big hitters that caused them to score big at the expense of also giving up a lot of runs, while the Wombats were built to hit home runs – a focus which they succeeded in, hitting one hundred total during the regular season. However, going into this series, the Red Sox were the clear favorites. They had won in the sole game where the two faced each other, and had done better throughout the season as well. The Wombats had struggled to win games despite their copious home runs, finishing the season 6-8 and last place in the stacked AL Central division, while the Red Sox finished 9-5, barely missing out on the wild card spot to the main playoffs via tiebreaker. Because of these factors, their victory here did not come as a great surprise.

That said, the Wombats gave the Red Sox a good run for their money. They pounced on the Sox’ weakness of a poor defense and put up an impressive first game. Season 3’s home run champion Chico Pappas headlined with a 7-for-7, five home run game, as the Wombats put up a final run differential of +34. However, the Red Sox ended up with an even bigger game, helped by an abysmal Wombats defense that gave up 14 errors, and triggered the 50-run maximum rule, taking Game One by a final score of 49-34. This game completely destroyed the Wombats’ confidence, with coach Crazyei8hts later confiding, “Scoring 37 runs in game 1 and still losing by 10 really took away any source of hope I had for this series.”

After the big Game One, both teams seemed to be a little tired out by Game Two, with neither putting on as big of a performance. That said, the Red Sox were still clearly dominant, hitting six home runs on the way to an eventual 39-22 victory to take the series.

This series combined with the Chicago White Sox’s victory over the Seattle Mariners and the Milwaukee Brewers’ win against the Los Angeles Dodgers to make three of the four Tier 2 division series that ended in two-game routs by the higher-seeded team. The only outlier in the group was the Super-Duper Melonheads’ three-game upset against the New York Mets.

Wombats coach Crazyei8hts’ final words about his team were, “I constructed this lineup to hit bombs, and they certainly did that. Unfortunately, they weren’t very good at anything else.” Crazy joins Yurya, Mavfatha, and areyoutyler in having both teams eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. No other coaches are projected to join this group.

The Red Sox will face off against the White Sox in the Tier 2 ALCS. While the Red Sox’s powerful DS performance and better regular-season record makes them tentative favorites, the White Sox have a legitimate shot at pulling off the upset, as they beat the Red Sox in their regular-season matchup and are on a hot streak of their own, having won six of their last seven games. The series is likely to be anything but a rout.