The St. Albert Blue Cardinals spread their wings as newbies in the Norwest Midget AAA Baseball League.
The first-year development team joined the Red Cardinals as the St. Albert Minor Baseball Association reps in the Norwest circuit this season.
The Blue Cardinals are 4-17 in league play as a Tier 2 provincial qualifier, compared to 13-3 for the Tier 1 Red Birds.
“We’re young so we’re working on getting better as we go and learn some skills so these kids can advance to the (Red Cardinals) team in the next one or two years as they progress through their careers,” said Brad Wolansky, head coach of the Blue Cardinals, 7-19 overall after Wednesday’s 6-4 loss to the South Jasper Place Jays at Callingwood Park.
“It’s definitely a work in progress,” said pitcher/second baseman Julien Charron. “Every loss you’re mad or whatever but you’ve got to look at it in the long run and see what you need to work on as a player and what the team needs to work on.
“Right now our pitching is doing pretty good, our bats are coming along as well as the infield and just all around defence.”
The bulk of the roster is mainly bantam AAA graduates in the first year of midget and former midget AA players.
“It’s definitely different compared to AA because we play against kids that are going places so it's good competition to see,” said Charron, a midget AA Cardinal the last two years. “Brad’s really given the young guys a lot of pointers and definitely a lot of kids are developing. Some of the first years are doing great this year.”
The Blue Cardinals raised their level of play after some initial growing pains.
“The very start of the year was a little bit daunting obviously playing some of the higher level teams in the province, the older kids, the 18-year-olds, but the guys came out and played hard,” Wolansky said. “We hit a lull facing some of those tougher teams. They beat us fairly handily so the kids had to get through that and they have. We’ve started really competing now in almost every game so that’s a good thing.
“We do make some mental mistakes so we're learning how to play the game itself and play the game at game speed,” Wolansky added. “We have pitched pretty well throughout the course of the year. We have guys that have thrown really, really well. We’ve got some top-end guys that have thrown multiple innings and have done very well.
“The hitting has come around too as we’ve gone. The guys are starting to have better at-bats and we’re scoring some runs right now.”
Ranked among the Norwest top-10 stat leaders are Will Gardner in on-base percentage (.576) and Ryland Strauss in stolen bases (10) and triples (three).
The team’s top hitters are Strauss and Dylan Gunderson with 14 and 13, respectively.
The averages for both players in 42 at-bats are .333 for Strauss and .310 for Gunderson.
Max Kahler has driven in a team-high nine runs while Will Gardner and Jacob Cebryk knocked in seven apiece.
Gardner also slugged the team’s first home run while going .333 in 21 at-bats.
The pitching staff is anchored by Gardner (1-1, 20 K in 25 innings), Dylan Dabels (1-3, 23 K in 23.1 innings) and Riley Norton (0-2, 15 K in 24.2 innings).
Tournament-wise, the Blue Cardinals finished 3-2 for second place at the recent Doc Plotsky Memorial in Sherwood Park. Scores were 5-0 against the Edmonton Padres, 4-2 against the Calgary Cubs and the 12-2 loss to the host Athletics in the round robin. In the final, the Blue Cardinals had to beat the Athletes twice and after the 7-2 victory fell 5-0 in the deciding contest.
Win or lose, the Blue Cardinals remain united.
“Being a team is huge and Brad preaches we're one team,” said Charron, 17, a Grade 12 Paul Kane student. “The better part of the season hopefully is going to come.”
The team’s goal is to “peak at the provincials the last weekend in July and if we win that we get an automatic berth into the Tier 1 provincials,” said Wolansky, a longtime senior AAA St. Albert Tiger and SAMBA alumni.
