<\/a><\/p>\n The Welland Jackfish aren\u2019t concerning themselves with the past as they ready themselves for a meeting with the Guelph Royals.<\/p>\n The Jackfish host the Royals Saturday at 6:05 p.m. in Game 1 of their Intercountry Baseball League best-of-five playoff semifinal series which is a rematch of last year\u2019s semifinal that saw the Royals prevail in four games.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not going on anything from last year,\u201d Jackfish manager Brian Essery said. \u201cWe\u2019re a different team this year. Obviously, they\u2019ve changed. A lot of new faces on that team, too. They made a lot of moves so they\u2019re a totally different team than what we\u2019ve seen all season.\u201d<\/p>\n The Jackfish, who finished in first place with a 31-11 record, swept the Royals in the regular season winning all four games by a combined score of 30-13.<\/p>\n The Royals placed sixth with a 20-22 record and upset the third-place London Majors in the first round of the playoffs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not a sixth seed by any means,\u201d Essery said. \u201cJust the way they loaded up at the deadline, we saw what they did to London in the first round. We know we\u2019re in for a battle, because their pitching is really good and so is ours.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a battle of the two best pitching staffs in the league.\u201d<\/p>\n The Royals added pitchers Claudio Custodio and Andrew Case at the deadline. Custodio earned the win in Game 1 of the quarter-finals while Case tossed three scoreless innings in two appearances.<\/p>\n With pitching expecting to dominate, Essery figures the little things will matter even more than usual.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to still maintain our aggressiveness, which we will. We\u2019re not going to shut that down by any means,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we\u2019ll still be aggressive on the bases, but we have to be smart and we have to play really good defence. Any little one of those things can cost you a ball game. So defensively, we have to be real sound, real tight.\u201d<\/p>\n Both squads will be well rested for the series which will see the teams playing potentially five games in six days.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNo issues on the mound. We\u2019re fresh and ready to roll and they will be as well because they ended their series on the weekend too,\u201d Essery said. \u201cYou have two pitching staffs that are going to be fully ready to go, so I anticipate a tight series.\u201d<\/p>\n Essery said he will keep the same starting rotation as in the quarter-finals. Teo Ortega will open the series followed by Euclides Leyer and Ben Abram.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it goes to a Game 4, we\u2019ll see where we\u2019re at then,\u201d Essery said. \u201cDepending on how we use (Jose) Dominguez out of the bullpen for the first three games, he can obviously start Game 4 and we feel real comfortable with Dominguez in Game 4. But who knows? We may need him. If it\u2019s tight situations and high leverage innings towards the end of the game, that\u2019s when we\u2019re going to use him.\u201d<\/p>\n The Jackfish also have lefty Pedro De Los Santos and closer Deivy Mendez to use in high leverage situations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to lean on those guys in the tight spots this series and I imagine there\u2019s going to be some tight spots this series,\u201d Essery said.<\/p>\n Game 2 is Sunday in Guelph at 4 p.m. with Game 3 Tuesday, Sept. 2 in Welland at 7:15 p.m. Game 4, if necessary, is Wednesday, Sept. 3 in Guelph at 7:35 p.m. Game 5, if necessary, is Thursday, Sept. 4 in Welland at 7:15 p.m.<\/p>\n Barrie takes on Hamilton in the other semifinal which begins Friday in Barrie.<\/p>\n Dear reader. If you liked this story or one of the 7,100 other stories found on our website, please consider hitting the Support Us button on the right-hand side of our home page and making a PayPal contribution to our website. Your support would be much appreciated. If you are a business\u00a0owner, please consider advertising on our site. Our rates are reasonable and we provide plenty of exposure for your business. Contact [email\u00a0protected]<\/a> for more information.\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.bpsportsniagara.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Welland Jackfish aren\u2019t concerning themselves with the past as they ready themselves for a meeting with the Guelph Royals. The Jackfish host the Royals Saturday at 6:05 p.m. in Game 1 of their Intercountry Baseball League best-of-five playoff semifinal series which is a rematch of last year\u2019s semifinal that saw the Royals prevail in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1985289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1985288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Jackfish-ready-for-Royals-BP-Sports-Niagara.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1985288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1985289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1985288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1985288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1985288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bpsportsniagara.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/JiffyLube2.jpg\")
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