Last year’s provincial shortcoming was tough to swallow for the first-place St. Albert Cardinals.
“For how good of a season we had and losing in the semis against the Parkland Twins, it left a bitter taste in our mouths,” said Davis Pratt, one of 14 returnees from the 2017 Cardinals, 30-3 in the Norwest midget AAA league and 41-14 overall after hosting the Baseball Alberta Tier I tournament.
“We’re going to come out here with some fire especially against them,” Pratt said of the provincial champions, and the first go-round with the Spruce Grove-based Twins is May 30 at Henry Singer field. “Hopefully we mercy them.”
The long journey to the U18 Baseball Canada nationals is underway for the Red Cardinals, one of two St. Albert Minor Baseball Association teams this year in the Norwest league.
“Our goal all the time is to play for a national championship. We came up a little short last year and hopefully we won’t make that mistake again,” said Cam Houston, head coach of the 5-0 Cardinals in league play and 6-1 overall after Wednesday’s 7-5 result against the Edmonton Padres at Footz Field.
It was 5-4 Padres after five innings and in the top of the sixth the Red Birds scored three times as a combination of walks and errors contributed to the visitors grabbing the lead.
The Cardinals were credited with a whopping 12 stolen bases in the win.
Putting the past behind the Cardinals will still take some healing time after provincials ended the way it did. The Cardinals struck out 11 times in the 6-1 loss to the Twins after dropping a 7-6 decision to the Sherwood Park Athletics in the last pool A game before the semifinals as both teams finished 2-1. A win would have slotted the Cardinals against the Fort McMurray Oil Giants, seeded seventh in the eight-team tournament, instead of the Twins, seeded third.
"That Sherwood Park game didn’t mean too much. We liked the situation we were in playing Spruce Grove. We had one of our better guys on the mound (Tylor Jans) and it just didn't work out our way. Their guy threw really well and shut us down offensively and it was tough to get anything going,” Houston said.
It was 5-0 Twins after two innings as the Cardinals struggled against Adam Macko, a lefty who twirled a four-hitter without issuing a walk over six innings.
Macko and Ben Erwin, who fanned nine and walked four while surrendering three hits in the 5-0 shutout of the Athletics in the final, played for the Vauxhall Academy of Baseball and the eligibility of both players from Spruce Grove with the Twins for provincials created a storm of controversy as Baseball Alberta officials bore the brunt of the protesters.
The Twins finished fifth at nationals in London, Ont., and the Athletics as provincial finalists represented Alberta at westerns in Ile-des-Chenes, Man.
This year’s nationals are Aug. 16 to 19 in Fort McMurray and Houston is confident the Cardinals have what it takes this time to go the distance.
“We’ll be really strong on the mound and offensively we’re really strong so if we keep runs down on the defensive side then we’ll have a pretty good shot to win a lot of games,” said Houston, head coach of the 2014 provincial winners and national silver medallists and the 2015 provincial finalists and western champions from St. Albert.
A few nagging injuries haven’t stopped the Cardinals from starting off the season on a winning note.
“We need to tighten some things up defensively but offensively we’re scoring a lot of runs and the guys have been doing well at the plate,” Houston said. “If we keep swinging like that and tighten up our defence it will be tough to beat us.”
The over-age players on the 20-man roster are Jans, who packs power as a pitcher and hitter, and Danny Tkachyk, a catcher by trade.
The pitching staff includes southpaws Liam Froment, Logan Blumhagen and bantam AAA graduate Tyson Kowaluk (“He’s going to do pretty well for us," Houston said).
As for the makeup of the team, “We’ve got a lot of returning guys, we've got a couple of young guys from the bantam team and we've got a couple of kids that played AA last year,” said Houston, the director of baseball operations for the Prospects Baseball Academy and several Cardinals are part of the year-round program.
“Overall we’ve got a good mix of guys that want to compete every day.”
Pratt, a third-year midget AAA player, believes the Cardinals are tighter than a drum as teammates.
“We still have the same core group of guys, we’ve played pretty much with all of these guys my whole baseball career, so we’ve got a lot of good chemistry throughout the team and that will give us a really good chance in the end,” said the versatile infielder at third and second who can also throw strikes.
“We’ve got a lot of good pitchers and we’ve got a lot of power dudes and we just keep hitting behind each other,” Pratt added. “We have a great group of guys out here so it’s going to be really fun.”
The Cardinals came out swinging in last week’s 17-3 season opener against the Blue Cardinals at Legion Memorial Park.
“We supported our pitchers by hitting a lot,” Pratt said of the five-inning affair. “In Prospects we’ve played a few games already but to get out here on our home field was pretty good.
“We just showed that we’re here to play.”
Last weekend in Calgary, the Cardinals swept the three-game series by scores of 13-3 against the East Central Bulls, 8-7 in extra innings against the Calgary Bandits and 20-9 against the South Jasper Place Jays.
The Bandits were a stiff test for the Cardinals to pass.
“The guy they had on the mound (Nick King) was throwing well and kept us close but as soon as we got into the bullpen we made it tough on them. We just struggled a little bit getting the offence going but once we did it was tough to beat us,” Houston said.
King struck-out five and walked three while giving up three runs, one earned, during a four-hitter over six innings.
The Cardinals, the home team in the game, opened the scoring with two in the second and the Bandits replied with deuces in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings.
The Cardinals tied it up with four runs on three hits in the seventh as Tkachyk’s two-run double with none out knotted the count.
In the eighth, the Bandits tallied once and the Cardinals then pushed two runs across without registering a hit.
Zach Froment finished the win with two RBIs.
The Bandits out-hit the Cardinals 9-7 and both teams committed three errors.
The Cardinals also left 10 men on base compared to eight for the Bandits.
The starting pitcher was Joe Karall – six strikeouts, three walks while letting in six runs, four earned, during a seven-hitter over 5.2/3 innings – with Blumhagen and Brady Kobitowich working in relief.
“We didn’t play too well probably the first three-quarters of the game but then the skip (Houston) kind of pulled us aside and gave us a talking-to. He told us to work together and bring it home as a team and I think that really helped and then in the last few innings we just showed what we had and won it,” said Pratt, 17, a Grade 12 Bellerose Composite High School student.
The next home game is Wednesday versus the Athletics at 6:30 p.m.
