The best is yet to come from the St. Albert Cardinals.
The defending Tier I provincial champions are winners of 11 of 16 games with the second half of the season underway in the Norwest 18U AAA Baseball League.
“It’s been pretty good so far,” said third baseman Jackson Moffat. “It’s a little different than last year. We’ve had some tougher games than we’ve usually had, but we’re growing and it’s good to see the guys are getting more comfortable with each other.”
Ten returnees from the fourth-place team at last year’s nationals are leading the way for the newcomers to follow.
“It’s a lot different of a team. We’re a younger team this year for sure. We’ve got guys learning and we’re getting better in everything we do,” said shortstop Mike Brisson. “We’ll be strong by the end of the year.”
Last year’s Cardinals finished 44-18 as the first St. Albert Minor Baseball Association team to represent Alberta at the Baseball Canada 18U championship since the 2014 silver medallists.
The 13-team Norwest circuit recently split into two divisions for the Tier I and Tier II provincials and the Cardinals (11-5) are ranked second behind the Parkland Twins (14-0) in Tier I after the first half.
“Round one is kind of like spring training in the MLB, you're kind of getting used to it,” Brisson said. “Now it’s time to get going. We need to play our best from here on out.
“We need to be better and we’ll be good.”
As for the five losses, “A couple of the games we played well, we just got outhit and we ran out of arms, and in other games it just felt like they wanted it more than we did,” Moffat said. “When we get everything going in a game at once like pitching, hitting and fielding then we’re going to be pretty good.”
One of the losses was 6-4 against the rival Twins in Spruce Grove early in the schedule.
“It was a tough loss. Parkland, we knew they would be a top team, they’re strong and we’re hoping it’s us and them at the top,” said Brisson, who belted a bomb in the game that apparently landed in Stony Plain. “We play them (July 13 and 14 at Legion Memorial Park). They’re going to be good games. We’re both good teams and we’ll be fighting it out to see who heads to nationals this year."
Last weekend against the Bandits (10-5) in Calgary, the Cardinals suffered setbacks of 2-1 in a walk-off, 17-16 in eight innings and 10-8 after scoring four in the fifth to knot it at eight. The only win was 7-2.
“It’s tough. You don’t ever want to go 1-3 on a weekend,” said Moffat, noting the Cardinals were missing “a few arms” because of the Bellerose Composite High School graduation.
“We’re a lot better than we played this weekend,” Brisson added. “We need to be better and make some adjustments with small things, just kind of tie all three aspects together – pitching, hitting and defence. If we do that then at provincials we’ll be a lot stronger than we are now and if we play to our best we’ll be a tough to beat.”
The Cardinals are not a team that throws in the towel when things go south.
“We don’t give up ever so we’re never out of games,” Moffat said.
Brisson agreed. “This weekend in one of the games we lost we were down 9-2, but we fought back. We’ve got grinders on this team.”
Brisson and Moffat cleared the fence in the 17-16 slugfest in Calgary – the Cardinals scored four times in the top of eight and the Bandits replied with five runs in the bottom half of the inning – as the teams combined for 33 hits, six errors and 23 runners left on base.
It was the first homer of the season for Moffat (“It’s been a while,” he said), while going 2-for-5 with one double with six RBIs.
Brisson’s dinger was his Norwest-leading fourth and the total includes two inside-the park scores against the Tier I Calgary Cubs (7-8) and Tier II Northern Lights (6-9) of Grande Prairie.
“It's fun when you're able to show off the speed a little bit and take advantage of them maybe being lazy. One of them was a triple and then they were kind of just lazy with the ball so I stole home on them to make it an inside the parker. We like to do that with teams if they’re lazy. If they’re not going to work hard then we'll take advantage of that for extra bases and runs,” said Brisson, who went 3-for -5 with one double and two RBIs in the 17-16 loss to the Bandits.
The Grade 12 St. Albert Catholic High School student is among the top-10 Norwest offensive leaders in slugging percentage (.742), RBIs (11) and runs (11) while batting .355 with eight stolen bases.
“I’ve played pretty good this year, but I need to be better. My stats are not a big thing I worry about, it's like the team going 1-3 this weekend. I'm most worried about that. I need to be better to help the team get some wins,” said Brisson, 17, who will play the outfield for the NCAA division one Niagara Purple Eagles based in Lewiston, New York and member of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference next season. “It’s going to be awesome.”
This weekend the Cardinals host the Red Deer Braves (7-4) and game times are 12 noon and 3 p.m. today and Sunday.
“We obviously want to come in and win four, but we can't take them lightly so we have to show up to play a good baseball team,” said Moffat, 17, a Grade 12 St. Albert High student who fills when needed at second base and on the mound.
Next weekend the Cardinals are competing in the Tigers Baseball Association tournament at Legion park. In pool A of the nine-team draw, the Red Birds are up to bat Saturday against the Calgary Longhorns at 3 p.m. and the senior AAA St. Albert Tigers in the 8 p.m. feature game.
