The dress rehearsal for westerns starts today at provincials for the junior AAA St. Albert Cardinals.
The first-place juniors are hosting the U21 westerns next weekend at Legion Memorial Park after competing for the Baseball Alberta championship in Innisfail.
“We’re excited,” outfielder Robbie Sullivan said. "Our pitching has been strong, we play good defence and we’re hitting well enough.
“All around we’re a pretty good team.”
The Cardinals are flying high after going 16-6 in league play while averaging 10.9 runs scored and six against per game.
“It’s gone pretty well for us. It’s been a lot of fun,” Sullivan said.
The five-team provincial round robin for the Cardinals kicks off against the host Innisfail Merchants (10-6) at 9 a.m. and the Barrhead Orioles (11-6) at 3 p.m.
Sunday‘s games are at 12 p.m. against the Fort Saskatchewan Red Sox (4-13) and 6 p.m. against the Confederation Park Reds (5-15).
If there are no tiebreakers, the top two teams meet in Sunday’s 3 p.m. final.
“We’ve beaten all the teams through the course of the year, so if we get off to a good start we’ll be fine,” head coach Jason Enright said. “We’ve got a lot of pitching depth, too.”
The Cardinals will be joined by another Alberta team at westerns and the five-team tournament includes two Saskatchewan teams and the Manitoba rep.
“We’re going to put on a good event,” said Enright, who attended last year’s U21 westerns in Brandon as an assistant coach with the Slave Lake Heat, the Alberta champions.
“That’s high-level baseball. There are a lot of guys that are off playing college baseball that are still continuing to play junior and we saw that last year,” Enright added. “I was pleasantly surprised by the calibre of baseball, and we competed well and I expect St. Albert and the other team that comes out of Alberta to do as well too.”
The Heat fell one win short of the final with a handful of Cardinals as pick-ups.
“It was a good experience for them and I’m hoping they bring that experience back here and are not going to be intimidated by the other teams that come in,” said Enright, the midget AA dugout boss for the Cardinals as the host team at the U18 westerns in 2016 as gold medallists and 2015 as silver medallists.
Last year’s juniors finished fifth at 10-11 in the seven-team circuit and at provincials didn’t qualify for the final.
Enright noted “there is a big difference” between the juniors of last year and this year.
“We have a few of that more core group of guys that graduated from the midget program together,” said Enright, who coached the midget AA Cardinals to Tier I provincial championships in 2015 and 2016. “We’re definitely stronger in the one-two positions, pitcher and catcher, which has definitely been our strength in that (junior) league. We’ve got eight to nine guys that can pitch competitively on any weekend so that’s definitely given us an advantage, and then we have three strong catchers. Last year we were a little bit short in both positions and it kind of didn’t bode well for the team in provincials.”
NCABL Red BIrds
Enright is also doing double duty as the field general of the senior AA Cardinals in the North Central Alberta Baseball League and the 20-player roster consists of only three non-junior players: Scott Peterson, Zach Pollard and all-star Hayden Chies.“Between the two teams we have 30 guys playing in our junior program, which is good. We hope to continue to grow it and add more guys to the junior team as they graduate through midget to keep getting both teams strong and competitive as possible,” Enright said.
Sullivan is one of several two-way players with the junior and NCABL teams.
“It’s great. I’m getting more games in. Baseball is fun,” the 21-year-old said.
As for the NCABL, “It’s a lot of fun. We’ve got a young team so it’s a bit different,” said Sullivan, adding “it’s a lot of the little things” that separate the junior league and NCABL.
“The older guys know how to play. They don’t make the little mistakes. They know how to close out games,” said the former midget AA Cardinal and St. Albert Catholic High School grad.
The Baseball Alberta Midget AA Player of the Year Award winners the past two years – Jake Enright and Nic Arlia of the Cardinals – also play for both teams.
The NCABL team is 11-9 with one game remaining after Tuesday’s 5-4 loss to the Westlock Red Lions (12-8) in St. Albert. The result determined the fourth and last playoff spot in the eight-team standings as Westlock won the season series 2-1.
“We’ve played extremely well for a young team. We’ve had a lot of close games that we’ve been on the positive end of,” Enright said. “This one was a little bit tough getting down in the hole early but we battled back.”
Westlock roughed-up all-star pitcher Tanner McLean-Poll for five runs in the first inning.
In the fifth inning, the Cardinals started rolling to load the bases and scored three runs on three consecutive singles before the first out was made at home plate.
A sac fly by Chies produced the fourth run and with two on Arlia lined a shot into the third baseman’s glove for the third out.
The next two innings the Cardinals were shut down in order.
Strong relief work by all-star Brendan Larsen allowed the Cardinals to bounce back.
“We showed maybe a little bit of our inexperience to start with but we never gave up and we made a game of it at the end,” Enright said. “I’m going to put the blame on me because I think the players weren’t prepared enough from a coaching standpoint and we just didn’t come out with fire in our belly to shut them down at the beginning and then they kind of got on top of us.
“We were our own worst enemy, I guess.”
The 2016 Baseball Alberta Ted Rudge Coach of the Year Award recipient has logged countless hours on the diamond this season while coaching in more than 70 league, tournament and exhibition games with the juniors and NCABL Cardinals.
“It’s been a busy grind but the good thing is we’ve got 30 (juniors) that signed up and the majority all stuck it out this season with us so I was able to pull players around both teams and it's kept a lot of guys involved in our program,” said Enright of the St. Albert Minor Baseball Association system.
“I wanted to see these guys who have moved on from midget continue to play, and this is a stepping stone. So, hopefully more talented players join the NCABL team as well at some point and maybe a few of them, after they come through the junior ranks, could help replenish some of the guys on the Tigers (in the senior AAAA Sunburst Baseball League) and keep all of our senior baseball strong and competitive.
"I know we just missed the playoffs this year by one run with the NCABL team and heartbreaking as it is it bodes well for us for the upcoming season.”
Tuesday the Cardinals host the Sherwood Park Athletics (16-3) at 7:15 p.m.
