After last season’s Northwest League championship, the Eugene Emeralds were riding high and hoping for a repeat. They had missed a playoff berth by by one game in the first half, but got the wild card as Hillsboro repeated as division champs in the second half. The Ems defeated Hillsboro in the divisional round but came up short in the championship, losing three games to one.
This was a brand new team made up of a lot of young 18-20-year-old kids when the season began. As such, the group needs to be judged on its own merits and really can’t be compared to that 54-22 championship team of 2016.