The Houston Astros’ Class A-Advanced Buies Creek Astros clinched the Carolina League championship Tuesday, September 11.

With Hurricane Florence prepared to impact the Carolina coast, and many hundreds of miles inland in the coming days, Minor League Baseball announced, September 11, that the Carolina League finals would be changed from its usual best-of-five series to a single, winner-take-all game on Tuesday night.

Buies Creek is the second Houston affiliate to take home a championship this week. The short season Class A Tri-City ValleyCats clinched their best-of-three series Sunday, September 9.

Buies Creek first baseman Jake Adams cracked a game-tying homer, his 17th on the year, in the eighth inning. With the ball leaving his bat at 109 mph, Adams hit what many believe may have been one of the hardest-hit homers in the team’s two-year history. The ball just barely squeaked inside the left field foul pole.

Shortstop Jonathan Arauz, Houston’s #23-ranked prospect, walked the Astros off with a sacrifice fly in the 11th to upend the Potomac Nationals (Washington Nationals’ A+ affiliate), 2-1, to win its first-ever Mills Cup title.

The 6’2″, 250-pound Adams was a 2017 sixth-round Houston draftee, while the 20-year-old Arauz came from Philadelphia in the 2015 trade that brought closer Ken Giles to the Astros. The Phillies had signed him as a just-turned 16-year-old from Panama in 2014.

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Buies Creek prevailed despite going zero-for-eight with runners in scoring position. In fact, the Astros left the bases loaded twice in a three-inning span, and stranded a total of 11 men.

Adams gathered three of the Astros’ seven hits in the victory, but none loomed larger than his two-out tater down the left field line in the eighth.

Seth Beer, Houston’s No. 7-ranked prospect and 2018 first-round draft pick out of Clemson, nearly walked it off in the 10th, hitting a deep fly ball that was caught by a P-Nat against the center field wall.

Catcher Chuckie Robinson and Adams began the fateful 11th inning with back-to-back singles and advanced to third and second base, respectively, on a Cody Bohanek sacrifice bunt ahead of Arauz. The rail-thin, six-foot, 150-pound switch-hitter wasted little time, lifting the first pitch into center field for the walk-off sacrifice fly.

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Buies Creek starter Bryan Abreu (signed at 16 out of the Dominican Republic) kept Potomac’s offense handcuffed over the first four innings, allowing just one hit and a walk while striking out five.

Related: Bryan Abreu Added to Astros’ 40-Man Roster

Normally a starter, Jose Hernandez, signed by Houston out of Mexico in 2015, gave up one run over the next three innings. Relievers Enoli Paredes (another Dominican signee) and 6’3″, 225-pound Colin McKee (round 18 draftee in 2016 out of Mercyhurst in Erie, PA) combined for six strikeouts and allowed just two hits while hurling two frames apiece.

The Buies Creek Astros are managed by former Houston third baseman Morgan Ensberg. Next season, the club is set to move to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where the Astros have signed a 30-year lease to keep it there.

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“I’m just very proud of the players,” Ensberg beamed to the NC Daily Record while winning the series that led to the championship game. “To see where they were in the beginning and to see where they are now, these guys have really made improvements and these are guys that are eventually going to have Major League value, and I just could not be happier for them.

“Our job is to prepare these players to have Major League tools,” Ensberg concluded. “The byproduct of really focusing on that a lot of times is winning.”

“This is awesome,” former Arizona outfielder and 2017 Houston draft pick JJ Matijevic told the Fayetteville Observer after the walk-off win. “This is what you dream of as a kid, to be a champion and we came out here and did our thing. It’s a great feeling.”