The St. Albert Cardinals are winging it in two leagues with a handful of players and a head coach doing double duty.
The junior AAA team is No. 1 at 7-4 in the Baseball Alberta 21U League and the senior AA team is in the playoff mix at 5-3-1 in the North Central Alberta Baseball League.
“It’s been good really good for us. I’m very happy with both teams,” said dugout boss Jason Enright, who also coaches the 18U AA St. Albert Cardinals Red, 10-1-1 for first overall in the province-wide 37-team league that is divided into four divisions.
“It’s a fun season. A lot of games, a lot of wins,” said Landon Christoffel, a 20-year-old jack of all trades who playes first and third, pitches and patrols right field with the junior and senior Cardinals.
Last year’s juniors placed first in league play at 16-6 and finished second overall at provincials as the host team for westerns.
“We definitely had a bigger roster with some more AAA guys so this year we’re a bit more of a grind team because we don’t have as many skill guys,” said Christoffel, one of five returnees on the roster.
“We picked up six guys from other organizations that were looking to play junior this year,” Enright said. “We have some guys eligible and willing to play, but they’re also playing with the (senior AAA St. Albert) Tigers so we're letting them play there as much as they can and then when we get into a bind we give them a call to come out.
“Some of them will rejoin our roster for provincials, which will only make us a little bit stronger at that point in time.”
The Edmonton Padres (6-6) are hosting provincials Aug. 4-5 at Wally Footz Field and westerns are Aug. 9-11 at Saskatoon.
Last year’s westerns ended in a downpour as the five-team round robin was cut short at Legion Memorial Park
The five-team 21U circuit includes the Innisfail Merchants (6-6), last year’s provincial champions who also competed at the 2017 westerns at Brandon.
Enright described the junior season as "pretty decent" for the Cardinals.
“We’ve played a little bit more inconsistent than we have in years past, which is good. We’re learning a lot. Some of our competition has improved their calibre as well and that’s good too. That league needs to get a little bit better talent into it and it’s starting to come around,” Enright said.
“We’re winning for the most part,” Christoffel added. “We had a bit of an issue getting all the guys out so when we’re short of players we’re usually .500 for wins and losses (in the league's Sunday doubleheaders) because we get short on arms.”
As for the team’s strengths, “Pitching and defence we’ve been doing pretty good. Hitting too, guys have been swinging it,” Christoffel said. “So all around we’ve been pretty solid.”
Last weekend at the Tigers Baseball Association tournament, the Cardinals lost pool B games to senior AAA Sunburst Baseball League teams by scores of 10-0 (mercy rule) against the Sherwood Park Athletics, the defending provincial champions, and 7-2 to the Red Deer Riggers and in the consolation bracket fell 11-8 to the NCABL senior AA Sherwood Park A’s.
Sunday the Cardinals host the Community Park Reds (6-5) in a junior doubleheader at 12 noon and 3 p.m.
NCABL season
The senior AA Cardinals are going with basically the same lineup that finished one spot short of the semifinals at 11-10 for fifth place in the eight-team standings.
“All of our core guys are back that we were hoping for,” Enright said. “We’ve kind of gone with a little bit of a smaller roster, which is good. It’s given the guys more playing time without having to worry about getting the other guys into the lineup.”
Last year's 5-4 home-field loss to the Westlock Red Lions in the second-last game determined the final playoff berth.
Two years ago, the Cardinals fell one win short of making the playoffs for the first time in team history after losing the wildcard elimination game 4-1 to Westlock.
The Cardinals joined the NCABL in 2013.
“We definitely have our mindset on making the playoffs and seeing what we can do from there," Enright said. “We have a solid enough squad again. We started off really well (3-1-1) and we're in a playoff spot right now so we're doing good.”
Injuries to three key players played a role in the team losing two out of three games before Monday’s 7-4 win over the Mets (4-4) in Stony Plain.
Veteran all-star Hayden Chies (“He’s been a little less effective than what he normally is,” Enright said.) is nursing an undisclosed ailment, while Tanner McLean-Poll, the 2018 recipient of the Dan Gerlach Award as the NCABL’s most promising junior aged player, and Brendan Larsen, a pair of pitching standouts, have also been hobbled by injuries.
"We have kind of been just getting by, but we need to get them healthy to be better,” Enright said. “Tanner, who is not only our best pitcher, but probably the best pitcher in the league, has been dealing with an ankle injury so he hasn’t pitched much considering how much he normally pitches, which has then put a lot of pressure on Brendan and then he’s dealing with some little leg injuries. He’s maybe been overworked a little bit so with the rain this last week it's given us a little bit of time off so hopefully we can get them healthy for the playoff stretch, which is kind of the meat of our order schedule-wise.”
The Cardinals host the defending champions Edmonton Blackhawks (3-4) tonight and the Edmonton Primeaus (6-3) Thursday and game times are 7:15 p.m.
Christoffel is confident the Cardinals can right a wrong after last year's disappointing end to the season.
“Our problem was we would kind of get up and then let teams back into games and we would lose games we couldn’t really afford to lose against teams that weren’t so good, so this year we’ve got to make sure we come out strong and hold onto leads,” said the St. Albert product. “This year we’ve won a lot more games probably than we thought we would. We've been swinging it pretty good against good pitchers and beating teams we hadn’t really beat last year.”
