After a rocky start to the 2023 campaign that included dropping five of the first six games, the Elmwood Expos won four of their next five and promptly reinserted themselves in the hunt for a postseason berth.

The Expos’ turbulent beginning to the summer included defeats against Plum City, River Falls, Spring Valley and a pair against the Hudson River Rats. Staring down the barrel of early elimination, Elmwood responded, in large part because of the presence of its veteran players.

Player/manager Tom Sauve, who has been with the Expos for approximately half a decade, believes that his team’s positive response to adversity was largely because of the veteran players on the roster.

Elmwood has a mix of long-time franchise legends alongside younger players who are in their third or fourth season with the team. According to Sauve, that’s typically the time when young players acclimate to St. Croix Valley Baseball League competition and play to their potential.

“We’re to the point where this is the third year for our younger guys,” Sauve said. “They’re sophomores and juniors in college, so they’ve been doing it a while. We feel like we’re starting to gel and hit our stride. At the beginning of the year, we were losing games and wondering what was going to happen, but then we turned it around at Bay City. That was big for us.”

With the hopes of the 2023 season hanging in the balance, Elmwood went to Bay City on Saturday, June 10, and gutted out a 7-5 win to improve to 2-5 in St. Croix Valley Baseball League action.

The win sparked something within the Expos, as it was the beginning of a streak in which Elmwood won four of its next five games. That stretch included victories against Bay City, Osceola, Spring Valley and a series split against the Prescott Pirates.

Elmwood’s 10-7 victory against Prescott on June 11, which was the first of a two-game seven-inning doubleheader that day, was the Expos’ first victory against Prescott in four years. The Expos lost the second game 7-5, but it signified that they can compete with the top teams.

“We’re competitive just like we always are, but we’ve just got to beat those teams in the top half (of the league),” Sauve said. “We split a doubleheader with Prescott. As long as I’ve been here, we’ve never beaten Prescott before. We really should have had two against them, but the second one got away from us a little bit.”

After stringing together four wins in six days, Elmwood dropped an 11-1 game at Ellsworth and then a 15-1 contest on the road against River Falls the following evening on Saturday, June 24. While the losses were lopsided, four of Elmwood’s top six players missed both of those games.

Notable missing players include Mason Dado, Braden Wolf, Adam Churchill and Tim Green, all of whom are among Elmwood’s top six offensive players. Life happens, especially in town ball, but without those cornerstone players, the Expos simply couldn’t compete in league play.

Despite those absences and the lopsided losses to Ellsworth and River Falls, Sauve remains confident that his team’s spurt of victories has them back in the hunt for a postseason berth.

“We were missing four starters,” Sauve said. “We’ve got different things going on, which is part of the season sometimes. We’ve got guys who have got lives. I would say the last week and a half starting with Bay City, we won four out of five, which got us back into the playoff hunt. We still feel like we control our destiny for getting in the playoffs.”

Elmwood, now 5-8 overall, is still in a position to make the annual postseason tournament. All teams within the St. Croix Valley Baseball League that have a .500 record or better in league play automatically qualify for the Wisconsin Baseball Association playoffs.

While the Expos still have a couple of tough games on the schedule, they’ve already played the vast majority of the most challenging league games against teams such as Prescott and Spring Valley.

“We’re trying to get to nine wins,” Sauve said. “We’ve already split with Spring Valley. We beat them last Friday, so that was a big win to put us back on track. We beat Bay City twice and we’ve still got two with New Richmond. We feel like we have some wins left on the schedule as long as we play ball like we should.”

While Elmwood is banking on stacking a couple of wins against New Richmond and Osceola to get back around .500 for the season, the Expos have another advantage – their last four league games are all at home.

That includes contests against Ellsworth, Hudson, Plum City and River Falls. The Fighting Fish have separated themselves as the top team in the league, but they’ve always had a tough time playing at Elmwood. Sauve feels good about where Elmwood currently sits in the standings.

“When we get nine guys that play every day, we’re much more formidable, and we never play well here, ever,” Sauve said with a bit of a chuckle after the game at River Falls. “Every time we play in Elmwood it’s a lot – actually we beat them the last few years in Elmwood. It’s not a rare thing, but it’s a big win for us.”

The Expos will look to continue their quest for a postseason berth at home against the New Richmond Millers on Saturday, July 8. The first pitch for that contest is slated for 3 p.m.