The midget AAA St. Albert Cardinals lost Wednesday to the SEEBA 1 Cardinals and begin the final stretch of the regular season this weekend.
SEEBA pounded St. Albert 7-2 at Legion Memorial Park, a game in which St. Albert only managed two hits. Edmonton now leads the season series 5-0 and Edmonton pitcher Nick Smiley has got the start on the mound in three of those games. He hasn’t had a problem with the St. Albert batters all season.
“He just does a real good job of commanding his fastball, putting himself in good pitcher’s counts and he’s got a real nice little curveball, so he keeps us off balance,” said St. Albert coach Sean Erikson. “We definitely haven’t been able to solve him yet this year. I give him credit for that.”
Smiley, who graduated from St. Francis Xavier High School’s baseball academy this summer, has a 7-0 record on the season. He also has 45 strikeouts in 42 and a third innings, a 1.28 earned run average and a 1.13 WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched).
Down 2-0 in the bottom of the first inning, St. Albert managed to get two runs on Smiley, just the fifth and sixth earned runs he’s given up this year. After Shane Zimmer earned a two-out walk, Wiebe hit a 3-1 pitch off the scoreboard for a two-run home run that tied the game.
In the third inning, the Edmonton side took control. With two men on, an Edmonton batter hit a swinging bunt that pitcher Taylor Simmonds fielded cleanly but his throw to first base was off the mark. Two runs scored on the play and the batter advanced to third base. The man on third later came in to score to put Edmonton up 5-2.
Simmonds, who got used to pitching against top-level competition at the Vauxhall Baseball Academy where he played for two seasons, was not his usual self on the mound. In three innings, he allowed four hits, five walks and five earned runs.
The loss dropped St. Albert’s record to 8-12 and kicks off the home stretch in the regular season for the Cardinals.
St. Albert was supposed to play Sherwood Park on Thursday, a game originally rescheduled from Tuesday, but it will have to be rescheduled again because Sherwood Park’s coach was playing for the Edmonton Capitals at the time.
On Friday the Cardinals played against the first-place Okotoks Black side (19-1). The score was not available at press time.
Starting today at Legion park, the Cardinals will play nine games in nine days, including four doubleheaders, concluding on July 25. That leads in nicely to provincials, which will also be held at Legion park, on two fields, from July 29 to Aug. 1.
“You always want to go in with the hot hand, as much as possible,” Erikson said. “We just want to keep up the high level of ball we’ve been playing. We’ve got a real busy stretch of games this last two weeks, so we’ll be coming in hot and that’s really the game of baseball, playing every day. It’s a pro-style schedule. We’ll definitely have no lack of game experience heading in.”
In today’s doubleheader, with games at Legion at 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., St. Albert takes on the Spruce Grove White Sox (11-14) and Okotoks Red (13-12). On Sunday, also at home, Okotoks Black returns for a doubleheader with the games starting at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
“We’re not focused on anything record-wise,” Erikson said. “We want to try to attack all the teams that are ahead of us in the standings, and all those teams happen to be, so every win we get, we’ll definitely be happy for. We just want to keep up a consistent, high level of baseball, and just not to get back to some of the mental mistakes that we were making early in the season.”
Erikson added this is the first time that he has his full squad back together. Simmonds and Zimmer both returned from Vauxhall at the end of June, but then there were a couple of weeks where several players were out of town for family vacations or functions and have recently returned.
In addition, St. Albert has recently had Kyle Gonzales able to return from a knee injury. The third-year midget player got one at-bat as a designated hitter on Wednesday against Edmonton and will see his playing time increase in the next couple of weeks. Gonzales is one of four players still with the team from when they competed in the national championships in 2008, along with Zimmer, Simmonds and McLean Cruthers.
Before Wednesday, Gonzales only had four at-bats this season, all coming at the start of the year.
“He’s a real good hitter at this level and he’ll definitely improve the middle of our line-up, and he’ll make pitchers watch out a little bit more when they’re going through the middle,” Erikson said.
