With less than a month to go in the regular season, the St. Albert Junior Cardinals are set to make a push to the playoffs.
The Cards are currently sitting in sixth place in the North Central Alberta Baseball League standings with a 7-7 record.
Head Coach Ray Brown’s assessment of the Cardinals’ season to this point is the team should be a little better.
“I think we’ve lost about three games that we should have won,” he said. “But that’s the way it goes with a young team – sometimes they play well and sometimes they allow mistakes that shouldn’t happen and it costs us a ball game.”
One place the team is looking to improve is the bullpen.
“We haven’t been real strong with our pitching this year, Mclean (Cruthers) has been our best pitcher and he’s been the yeoman of our pitching staff so we need the other three guys to step up and carry their load,” Brown says.
One of the pitchers who can help carry the load is Levi Dick. Dick is currently the No. 4-ranked pitcher on the NCABL’s mid-season leaderboard with a 1.70 ERA in 12.33 innings throwing for the Cardinals.
Six wins won’t guarantee the Cards a spot in the playoffs, but coach Brown says there’s still time for the team to move up in the rankings – it will just take some hard work for St. Albert to move up the ladder.
“It’s going to be close because the top four teams make the playoffs and right now the team that’s in fourth place is Camrose. They only have four losses and we don’t play them again. So we’re going to need some help from the league in order to get to that fourth spot,” Brown said on the phone Wednesday.
Tuesday night was another extra innings affair for the Cardinals when they claimed a 10-9 victory over the Sturgeon Paladins at Legion Park.
The Paladins busted out of the gate with five runs in the first inning, leading coach Brown to make a change on the mound.
“I started one of our young pitchers and he didn’t pitch real well,” Brown says. “We sent him out there for the second inning and he walked the first batter so I replaced him with Mclean Cruthers,” Brown says.
Cruthers replaced Ian Pollard and allowed four hits. St. Albert was able to get two runs in the second, ending the inning with a 9-2 score. That put the Cardinals on a roll that saw them tie the contest at the bottom of the seventh inning forcing the game into overtime.
The Junior Cards claimed the win at the bottom of the eighth inning. With two outs and the bases loaded, Matt Biollo earned a walk that brought in the winning run.
Brown said the Cards played very well defensively allowing the team to stave off any more Paladin runs.
“It was just one of those games where we kept battling, kept battling and kept them off the board for the last five innings,” Brown said. “And it gave us a chance and we came back.”
The Cardinals posted another close win Thursday night when they bested the Edmonton Warriors 10-9.
St. Albert plays a doubleheader at Footz Field against the Edmonton Blackhawks on Saturday beginning at 1:30 p.m.
The Blackhawks (6-3), who are managed by former Edmonton Oiler Randy Gregg, are the No. 3-ranked team in the league.
“We’ve got to find a way to win those two games on Saturday,” Brown said. “We’re going to have to really step up to the plate and play the best we can to beat his team because they’re a pretty good team.”
