The Portage Padres are headed to the second round of the Santa Clara Baseball League playoffs, which begin tonight.

The Padres closed things out with the Royals with a dominant 12-0 win in Carberry last night. It was 7-0 for Portage after the first two innings, and Padres' Tyler Butler says their pitching -- and hitting -- carried them the rest of the way.

"We never gave up the big inning, we never had any errors in the field at all. We stuck with it after getting a good lead, we snuck a couple across after that to finish out the game. Jason Kirkland just kind of shut them down with 13 K's."

The Padres quickly have to look ahead to their semi-final series, against Plumas, the team they fell to in the last year's semi. Butler says last night's win really fired up the team for the next round.

"You could kind of tell that everyone was kind of tense before the game, but to finally get a win like this going forward is going to help us for sure going into next series against Plumas."

The Padres and Pirates go at 7 in Portage. The other semi-final goes tonight as well -- it's between Minnedosa and Neepawa.