The St. Albert Tigers are on a mission as the host team for the senior AAA provincial championship.
After getting bounced from the Sunburst Baseball League playoffs in two games by the Fort Saskatchewan Athletics, the Tigers are not worried about starting the provincial tournament Friday at Legion Memorial Park against last year’s national champions.
“We beat them in the final of our tournament and then we lost in extra innings in the final of the Riggers tournament,” said Tigers’ coach Kurtus Millar. “We’ve had some really close games. We beat them twice in that three-game series [at the end of the regular season]. We know we can beat them. We just know we have to play well.”
In the Sunburst semifinals at the end of July, the Athletics beat the Tigers 6-3 in St. Albert and 6-4 the next night in Fort Saskatchewan.
“They were both good ball games,” Millar said. “We just didn’t hit with runners in scoring position. They got their hits when they had to and we didn’t.”
During the last week the Tigers have been practicing every night and focusing on the tournament that really matters. The winner will earn the right to travel to Quebec next summer for nationals.
To give their team a boost, the Tigers picked up two players from the Edmonton Prospects of the Western Major Baseball League: Jarvis Greiner, who will play at second base or be used as a pitcher, and relief pitcher Drew Boyer. Both have previously played with the Tigers.
However, Millar knows that anything could happen in a tournament where the five teams competing are matched up closely in terms of talent, from the Athletics (11-5 in Sunburst regular season) to the Calgary Redbirds (1-9).
“Calgary made some good pick-ups for their pitching,” Millar said. “The boys are going to have to play well this weekend. There’s no doubt about that. There’s not a weak team in this tournament.”
One interesting statistic that bodes well for the Tigers is the fact the last three provincial tournament hosts have gone on to win the tournament.
“It’s huge that we’re playing in St. Albert. They boys are jacked up,” said Millar.
He believes a 2-2 record might get a team into the tournament final if they beat out another team based on a runs for-against tiebreaker.
“If we go 4-0 that would be great because then you’ve got to lose twice in the final.
In last year’s tournament, the Tigers got off to a losing start and kind of “shut down” after that, so this year, prior to provincials, they have been focusing on intensity.
“Even in practice, we’re making the guys go at game speed,” Millar said. “In batting practice, we do situational hitting — move a guy over from second base or score a guy from third base, so we’ve been working a lot on that.”
The Tigers are striving to capture their first provincial title since 2006.
After opening against the Athletics they played the Red Deer Stags on Friday night. They also have games on tap against Calgary at 5 p.m. Saturday and the Red Deer Riggers, last year’s provincial champions, at noon Sunday. If there are no tiebreakers, the final is 3 p.m. Sunday.
For the complete schedule, visit http://www.ballcharts.com/stalberttigers
