Adelaide Giants and Sydney Blue Sox to compete for Australian Baseball League title
The Sydney Blue Sox will host the Adelaide Giants in the Australia Baseball League (ABL) best-of-three Championship Series at the Blue Sox Stadium in Blacktown, Sydney - the venue of the baseball competition at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.
The series opens on Friday, January 23, with Game Two scheduled for Saturday, January 24. Both games will start at 19:00 (local time). Eventual Game Three is scheduled for Sunday, January 25, at 18:00 (local time).
All the games will be broadcasted live on Baseball+ in Australia, and DAZN in Japan and Taiwan.
The winner will succeed the Canberra Cavalry.
Sydney will compete in the Championship Series for the first time, while Adelaide has won the Claxton Shield in 2023 and 2024. The two teams haven't met in a postseason series in 14 years.
Both managers have won two league titles.
Chris Adamson will lead an Adelaide team relying on a strong lineup. Six hitters finished the season with a + .300 batting average. A middle infield imported from the USA represents the Giants' biggest threat. Second baseman Nick Ward batted .354 with five home runs, Shortstop Devin Saltiban went .321, also with five homers. The Giants' starting pitchers are Jack O'Loughlin, the most recent Australian Major League Baseball (MLB) player, hard-throwing left-hander Josh Hendrickson, a former Triple-A player who represented Australia in the U-18 and U-23 Baseball World Cups, and 22-year-old Venezuelan right-hander Giuseppe Velasquez.
Brooke Knight manages a Sydney team that posted a league-leading 3.35 earned run average (ERA) with six pitchers who have gone over 20 innings during the season. Import pitcher Landen Bourassa (USA) will start game one. He posted a 2.31 ERA this season. The Blue Sox will hand the ball to Alexander Wells, the ABL 2024-25 MVP, for game two. If the series reaches game three, Knight will turn to 19-year-old Houston Astros prospect Jagger Beck. First baseman Erc Rataczak, who played 63 games at Class A Advanced for the Miami Marlins in 2025, dominated the regular season with a .336 batting average and seven home runs.