Aug 21, 2025 By Chris Dugan 3 min read

Just when you thought the Wild Things would have no head-to-head matchups that hold significant meaning during the stretch drive of the Frontier League season because they do not play Central Division leader Lake Erie, along comes a losing streak and a weekend series against the Mississippi Mud Monsters to add intrigue.

Mississippi is the team that the Wild Things are battling for the final wild-card playoff berth in the Midwest Conference. The Mud Monsters and Wild Things begin a three-game series at EQT Park tonight.

Washington entered Thursday night’s game against Evansville with a six-game losing streak and a four-game lead on Mississippi in the standings. Washington was 47-39 while Mississippi was 43-43.

The Mud Monsters showed Wednesday night that they aren’t just playing out the string. Mississippi’s Karrell Paz hit a two-out grand slam in the eighth inning that gave the Mud Monsters a 4-3 win at Florence.

The Mississippi win, along with Washington’s 6-4 loss to Evansville, kept the Wild Things’ magic number to clinch a playoff berth at 7 with 10 games remaining, including Thursday night’s contest. Any combination of Washington wins and Mississippi losses equaling 7 puts the Wild Things in the playoffs.

However, if Mississippi were to sweep the weekend series – and win the season series – it could turn the wild-card race into a one-week shootout.

The current standings and schedule favor Washington. The Wild Things entered this week with nine home games among their 12 remaining contests. They lost two of those home games to Evansville, the last-place team in the Central Division.

“I told the guys, you got a break with nine home games out of 12 to end the season, now you have to take advantage of that,” Washington manager Tom Vaeth said earlier this week.

In addition to the weekend series against Mississippi, Washington will play a road series next week at Joliet (38-47), the fourth-place team in the West Division, before concluding the regular-season at home against the Down East Bird Dawgs (34-51), the third-place team in the Atlantic Division, over Labor Day weekend.

Mississippi will close the season with six games against West Division rivals, at home against first-place Gateway (51-34) and at last-place Windy City (34-52).

“The goals we set for ourselves are still in front of us,” Vaeth said. “The young guys we have in here are having an understanding of what the saying the ‘dog days of August’ means. You have to find a way to keep your energy up and be mentally fresh. At the end of the (last) road trip we were 0-4 but you have to flush that. There is nothing we can do about that now.”