No, Tacoma baseball fans, that’s not a case of déjà vu you’re experiencing. Tomorrow evening, it will indeed be the Sacramento River Cats sitting in the Cheney Stadium visitor’s dugout. Again.

This year will mark the third time in their past three playoff runs that the Tacoma Rainiers will have to get through the Oakland Athletics’ Triple-A Affiliate in order to advance to the Pacific Coast League Championship. Each of the previous two playoff series have gone the full five games, many of which have been closely-fought battles.

The first time River Cats and the Rainiers squared off in the postseason, Sacramento stole the opener at Cheney Stadium in 2001, only to see Tacoma take the second tilt 5-4, then rattle off two more wins on the road at Raley Field to advance to a PCL Championship Series that would eventually be canceled due to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. That team featured a young pitcher by the name of Denny Stark, whose career has since brought him full circle, right back into the Tacoma playoff fold.

In 2005, the Rainiers had an even larger mountain to climb, as the River Cats took both games at Cheney Stadium, downing Tacoma 7-3 in the opener and 7-4 in Game 2, forcing the Rainiers to win three straight road games.

Dan Rohn’s squad was more than equal to the task, though, and fired off a convincing opening salvo with a 7-4 win on Sept. 9 at Raley Field, thanks to a 4-for-4 night from Shin-Soo Choo, and 2-for-5 nights from Aaron Rifkin and Rene Rivera.

The next night was a tension-filled evening, as the River Cats scored two runs in the bottom of the first before the Rainiers tied things up with a pair of their own in the top of the second. After giving up a run in the top of the fourth, Sacramento jumped on top 4-3 in the bottom of the eighth on RBI singles by Jermaine Clark and Hiram Bocachica. But in the very next frame, a sacrifice fly by catcher Wiki Gonzalez evened things up yet again, and in the top of the 10th, Tacoma scored what would prove to be the winning run on a groundball single by Asdrubal Cabrera. Finally, on the four-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Rainiers finished off the River Cats 5-2.

And so here the two teams find themselves once again, ready to kick off yet another playoff series at Cheney Stadium. The series should prove to be an intriguing match up, as evidinced both by how close the season series was (Sacramento took nine of 16 meetings) and how well-matched the two squads are statistically.

Tacoma enters the conference championship having led all of Minor League Baseball in home runs during the regular season, slugging 166 roundtrippers in 144 games. The Rainiers have a higher team batting average (.280) than the River Cats–who hit at a .273 clip during the regular season–and also have the edge in slugging percentage, out-mashing Sacramento .450 to .436.

The River Cats, however, are far from a light-hitting team, having put 150 over the fences this season. And while their team ERA is not the best in the league (4.30), it is more than half a run lower than that of the Rainiers pitching staff (4.84). With the pitching and offense coming close to negating one another, it would not be surprising if this year’s series follows the trend that these two foes have set in postseasons past.

Rainiers Stand in Way of Three-Peat

While the Tacoma Rainiers are making their first playoff appearance since 2005, the opposing Sacramento River Cats are no stranger to postseason play. In the franchise’s first nine seasons of existence, they have captured four PCL Championships and two Triple-A Championships, coming in 2007 and 2008.

With all that at stake, Sacramento will send PCL veteran and Tacoma native Chris Gissell to the hill for the series opener. In 14 minor league seasons, Gissell has compiled an 87-87 record with a 4.22 ERA. Gissell only made two appearances in 2009, both of them starts. In those two outings, he went 0-1 with a 3.52 ERA in 7.2 innings.

The Rainiers will send lefty Chris Seddon (9-8, 4.51) to the hill tomorrow evening to start Game 1. This season against the River Cats, Seddon is 1-1 with a 4.20 ERA against the River Cats in three starts, two of those coming on the road.

The last time Seddon faced Sacramento at Cheney Stadium, he picked up the win on April 17, when he gave up two earned runs in 5.1 innings of work with five strikeouts.

In his last two starts–both pressure-packed affairs–Seddon has come up huge, going 2-0 with a 3.27 ERA. In the season-series finale against the rival Portland Beavers on August 30, Seddon pitched the Rainiers into a first-place tie, going six strong innings while scattering five hits. Five days later, he notched a series-opening win against the Colorado Springs Sky Sox, grinding through a five-inning, eight-hit outing while surrendering just two runs.