The midget AAA St. Albert Cardinals faced some of the top teams in the league on the weekend and went 1-3.
St. Albert (9-15) beat the Spruce Grove White Sox (13-15) in 10 innings, but followed that up with an 8-4 loss to Okotoks Red (14-13) and dropped both games of a Sunday doubleheader against the Okotoks Black (22-2) squad, 15-9 and 9-3.
“We would’ve liked to come out at least 2-2, but we had a real tough schedule with the teams coming up from Okotoks this weekend,” said St. Albert coach Sean Erikson. “They’re some of the most well coached and prepared teams in this league.”
The Cardinals now have just five games remaining in the regular season before provincials begin at Legion Memorial Park on July 29. They also have two games that were postponed from last week that they could try to find time for. St. Albert is in seventh place out of 10, in the provincial standings. Okotoks Black and Edmonton 1 Cardinals (27-2) are at the top.
Against Okotoks Black Sunday, the Cardinals defence played well for most of the game, but the visitors took advantage of every opportunity they were given, including a big eight-run third inning in the second game of the doubleheader.
“It puts a damper on the team,” said Cardinals third-baseman Shane Zimmer. “You sort of lose some confidence. We just compact errors all together and it leads to big innings. If we don’t have that one big inning against us, then it’s a close ball game. We’re probably up on the bench and it’s a whole new ball game.”
Down 5-3 in the bottom of the third inning, St. Albert pitcher Taylor Wiebe lost a bit of control on his pitching. He opened the inning with two four-pitch walks. Those base runners executed a double steal, but it didn’t matter as the next batter, Justin Lee, was hit by a pitch, loading the bases.
Wiebe then threw two balls to Adam Romaniuk before being taken out of the game to make room for Matt Woodland, but he couldn’t find the strike zone either, allowing a run on a walk. Next up, Matt Cowitz singled in a run. Okotoks added a run by lining a ball off Zimmer’s glove at third, a blooper single to right field and three-run double over Levi Dick in right field. By the end of the third, Okotoks led 13-3.
St. Albert added single runs in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings, but allowed Okotoks to score two runs in the meantime. Trailing 15-6 in the top of the seventh inning, St. Albert narrowed the gap to 15-9, but that’s as close as the comeback effort would come.
One bright spot for the Cardinals was the fifth-inning home run from Zimmer, his first since returning to St. Albert from Vauxhall with teammate Taylor Simmonds.
“With Simmonds already having one, I had a bit of trash talk coming to me, so it feels good to finally get one,” said the 18-year-old.
Despite playing four games in two days, including one 10-inning affair, Erikson said his team didn’t get into trouble with not having enough pitchers to throw from the mound.
“Our bullpen guys, on the whole, did a pretty effective job,” he said. “It wasn’t the best weekend for our starters, but they still competed and gave us some innings to at least keep us in a reasonable pitching situation going forward.”
They were helped out by a strong pitching performance from McLean Cruthers in the 4-3 win over Spruce Grove. The right-hander pitched six-and-two-thirds innings, throwing 95 pitches, giving up six hits and allowing just two earned runs. Simmonds got the winning RBI in the bottom of the 10th.
The Cardinals are in Calgary (3-15) for a doubleheader tonight, and they’re back at home on Sunday against Red Deer (14-12) to close out the regular season.
