Who says expansion teams need some time to become contenders?

The Yolo High Wheelers must have missed that memo.

It didn’t matter that one of two of the Pioneer Baseball League’s first-time forays into northern California was starting a team from scratch this year and trying to find its way in a league with over eight decades of history. It didn’t matter that they had a fairly underwhelming first half of the season. It didn’t matter that they were faced with a 1-0 hole in the best-of-five Championship Series on the road.

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It all didn’t matter, because the High Wheelers got it done and won the title in their inaugural season of playing baseball in the PBL, bringing the league title to California for the first time in the process.

The Golden State era of the PBL is officially underway, and for the High Wheelers, after all they had to go through to reach this point, it’s well-deserved.

Here’s a look back at all that went down during the Pioneer Baseball League playoffs — and how the Yolo High Wheelers won a title in their first-ever season:

First Time’s A Charm

The Yolo High Wheelers didn’t exist until January.

But eight months after announcing that it would play in the 2024 PBL season, Yolo ended up standing tall above everyone else in the league at the season’s end. 

The High Wheelers ended up qualifying for the postseason by way of finishing runner-up to the other Californian team in the PBL, the Oakland Ballers, in the league’s second-half standings. It was a strong turnaround for the Davis-based ballclub after it finished with a middling 23-23 record in the first half, 13 games behind the first-half-winning Missoula PaddleHeads. 

The playoff field ended up being the league’s two Golden State teams against each other on one end and two of the league’s Montana teams on the other as Yolo played Oakland — after the two teams played 36 times in the regular season — and Missoula played the Kalispell-based Glacier Range Riders, with the High Wheelers and Range Riders’ taking the series by 2-1 and 2-0 margins, respectively. 

And while Glacier sent a statement in Game 1 of the Championship Series by shutting out Yolo by a 2-0 margin, the High Wheelers rolled the rest of the way. 

Yolo stormed back in Game 2 with a big 2-1 win in Big Sky Country, evening up the series as it shifted back to Davis for the final three games. Now back in front of home support for Game 3, it was the High Wheelers who got the commanding 2-1 series lead as they pulled off a 6-3 victory on the Range Riders, heavily thanks to a huge four-RBI day from outfielder Brayland Skinner. 

With the title for the taking for the first time in Game 4, Yolo made sure that it was a legendary afternoon.

Glacier looked bound to force a Game 5 as it ripped out to a 5-0 lead after three-and-a-half innings, with home runs from Ben Fitzgerald and Jerome Huntzinger putting the visitors up big. But the High Wheelers roared back into it with a five-run sixth, punctuated by a game-tying grand slam from Tanner Smith.

The Range Riders responded immediately with a two-run seventh to make it 7-5, with Fitzgerald going yard once again to put Glacier on top. Then Bobby Lada put Yolo ahead once and for all in the most dramatic of ways. 

With two men on and two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Lada (who already had a solo shot in the sixth inning to kick off the High Wheelers’ rally) ripped one off of the left field foul pole on Glacier’s Noah Owen, walking off the game — and the PBL title — in dramatic 8-7 fashion. 

Not a bad way to cap off your first-ever season of professional baseball, Yolo.

Sorry for the delay… things got a little crazy in Yolo!

Your Yolo High Wheelers are your 2024 PBL Champs!#bobbybombs #walkoff #champs pic.twitter.com/Qay4inUmXa

— Yolo High Wheelers (@YCHighWheelers) September 22, 2024

Monsters On The Mound

The High Wheelers did not have the Pioneer’s best pitching staff from a pure numbers standpoint; the Boise Hawks outdid second-placed Yolo in team ERA (5.23 to 5.30) and only two other teams had fewer strikeouts on the year than the High Wheelers 720, for instance.

But those on the bump for Yolo performed when it mattered during the playoffs.

Across the High Wheelers’ seven postseason games, their staff combined to allow more than four runs just once (in the team’s title-clinching game) and gave up two runs or fewer on three separate occasions, giving Yolo an edge when its offense sometimes struggled to get going. 

Game 2 of the Championship Series, when the High Wheelers were down by a game and needed a strong bounce-back outing to get them back on the right track toward a trophy, was probably the team’s best playoff example of strong pitching coming in to save the day.

That night in Montana’s Flathead Valley against Glacier, Yolo starter Brandon Mitchell tossed a strong five innings and allowed just one run off of five hits, all while his bullpen backed him up and ensured that the High Wheelers would have enough time to get to work. Andrew LaCour, Jack Zalasky (who got the pitching win), Connor Langrell, and Ty Buckner (who nabbed his 12th save of the season) combined to allow the Range Riders just one more hit the rest of the way, holding on when Lada had a go-ahead RBI base hit in the eighth.

It was all part of a completed redemption arc for manager Billy Horton as the former Billings Mustangs boss — who went to last year’s Championship Series with Billings but lost to the Ogden Raptors — managed to win it all with a new team in his first attempt since, adding another wrinkle to an epic inaugural campaign for the High Wheelers.

Golden State Surge

Long a league which primarily has had teams based in the Mountain West before this season, the PBL made a major change to its structure ahead of 2024 not seen before in the league’s previous 85 years of history. 

The change? Planting down roots on the West Coast.

Yolo and Oakland’s additions were the Pioneer’s first ventures into California, joining the league’s previously existing teams in Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado. Yolo (referring to Yolo County, where the team’s home city of Davis is based) became its home county’s first-ever professional sports team in a place better known for cycling and being the home of UC Davis, whereas the Ballers were established to fill a void for baseball in the city for those that feel betrayed and/or let down by the MLB’s Oakland Athletics, who will be leaving town after this season.

Considering that both Californian teams ended up making the Pioneer’s playoffs and one ended up winning it all, it's safe to say that the league’s moves to expand — from purely a results and success standpoint — were home runs.

The former minor league, which became independent in 2021, has been great for markets in the western U.S. that don’t have major professional sports in their cities or nearby. If the positives of the California move can be replicated elsewhere, perhaps markets that the Pioneer has had teams based in the past — such as the Canadian province of Alberta or various other Mountain West cities — could be targeted for expansion.

That’s all speculation, however, and for right now, the Pioneer is in a healthy place. Mix in some added motivation from the Pioneer’s longtime clubs like Idaho Falls (founded in 1940) and Billings (founded in 1948) to take back the crown from the newbies, as well, and we could be seeing a competitive and cutthroat league continuing to grow and thrive for years to come.

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