The defending provincial champions left their mark on Okotoks Dawgs Black in last weekend’s three-game series in the Baseball Alberta bantam AAA league.
The Cardinals lost twice but the 5-4 victory was a major milestone in preparing for provincials.
“We were probably facing the best team in the province right now and it was nice to put a loss on them finally. They were undefeated until then and we got to expose them a little bit,” said shortstop/pitcher Jackson Moffat, one of four returnees from the fourth-place finishers at the U15 Baseball Canada nationals.
“We won with some clutch hitting by some first year kids and some expected hitting by some returning players as well.”
Last year the Cardinals knocked off the 2015 provincial champs in the Tier I final with four runs in the top of the seventh and in the bottom half of the inning pulled off the game-ending double play with the bases loaded for the come-from-behind 8-6 decision.
“It’s obviously a big rivalry,” said Sean Erikson, head coach of the Cardinals. “It was the first time we’ve seen them since then so they came out wanting to get us and we came out wanting to get them. I know it was also the first time all year they’ve only batted nine guys in the lineup and it was a sign of them wanting to pair down and get ready for provincials so we kind of took it as a challenge.
“Last year when we played them early in the season I told the boys we just want to try and get one from them so that they know we can beat them and then we only have to beat them once and that’s the last game of the year or maybe in the semifinals if the bracket works out like that so we kind of set that as our goal this year.
“We knew they were undefeated and we knew we would see some better pitching than we had so it was a little test for ourselves to see what we’re doing well and what we need to work on. Brayden Michetti pitched a gem for six innings and they came back and tied it up in the seventh inning and then we were able to get two in the top half of the eighth and hold them to one to steal that first win.”
Erikson expects the result will pay dividends down the road.
“It’s just a huge boost for the guys. It put us firmly back on their radar,” said the second-year dugout boss of the Cardinals. “They’re a strong team and I don’t think they’re going to pick up many more losses throughout the season so that win gives us that confidence again similar to what we had last year.”
The Cardinals also suffered losses of 13-2 and 10-3 against Okotoks (19-1) at Legion Memorial Park.
The Cardinals (12-8) are ranked fourth in the 11-team standings after Wednesday’s 8-2 setback to the Sherwood Park Athletics (7-12) at Centennial Park.
“We’ve had a lot of ups and downs. We’ve won weekends 3-0 and then we’ve dropped some close games to teams that we probably should’ve beat but so far it’s been a good season but there is a lot of work ahead of us if we want to go back to nationals,” said Moffat, a rock in the middle of the lineup. “The team effort is there but our bats have definitely picked up a few games for us.”
The first St. Albert Minor Baseball Association bantam AAA team to qualify for nationals since 2007 was also the only team to go undefeated in pool play at the U15 championship in Summerside, PEI before ending the season with playoff losses of 7-0 to British Columbia in the bronze medal game after falling 12-2 to Quebec in the semifinals.
“It’s amazing to play on a championship team, especially when you’re the underdog going into a (provincial) final and you pull it out and then you go and place fourth in nationals, which was amazing,” said Moffat, 15.
The Grade 10 Bellerose Composite High School student is joined by James Diduch, Nathan McClinton and lefty Tyson Kowaluk from last year’s team.
“It’s a challenge when you only have four guys back. You really have to work to create the culture again. You don’t get that carry over, just rolling a bunch of guys in who have kind of been through it before, but we’ve been lucky with the group of four guys we have. They’ve really, really been good leaders for us and four of our better pitchers and obviously that gives us some experience on the mound,” Erikson said. “It kind of gives us that that solid base to build around on and off the field in the way they carry themselves and the way they’ve gone about their work. It’s been huge just to show that the first year guys coming in and the guys coming up from AA just how we go about our business at the AAA level.”
Erikson has the Cardinals believing they are in every single game until the last out is in a player’s glove.
“We have this motto in baseball that you can’t run out the clock. You get 21 outs on offence and 21 on defence and they got to get all 21 of those from you and that kind of held true last year in the provincial championship game. We gave up the lead (4-1) and we were able to battle back and we regain it late,” Erikson said. “With the pitch count limits in this league it’s very tough for starting pitchers to finish out games with 90 pitches so you almost inevitable get into the bullpen and in some of the games that we haven’t started off that well we’ve been biding our time just knowing that if we stay consistent and we take care of the little things and try and keep the score close then we’re going to have a chance to do some damage at the end when we get into their bullpen. We’ve probably had four, five games so far this year where we’ve managed to carry that over from last year.
“There are no free outs in this game and you’ve got to earn all 21 of those and with this age group a lot of guys don’t have the mental fortitude to be able to stay consistent throughout the whole game so we’ve been able to come back and steal ourselves a couple of wins that we didn’t necessarily deserve with how we played at the start of the game and that’s definitely a good trait that will help us down the line.”
This weekend the Cardinals are in Calgary for three games against Cubs Blue (11-4).
