Cardinals' Pitching and Defence Once Again Dominates as West Coast Completes Season Sweep of Kelowna

The West Coast Cardinals had the brooms out looking for the 4-game season sweep of Jon Przybyl's Kelowna squad. It was a busy day at the ballpark with Vancouver Minor's annual Opening Ceremonies and Family Day drawing crowds of players, families and coaches. The Cards were playing their first couple games at the newly renovated Nanaimo Park fences and backstop, at the end of the day West Coast improved to 11-1 this season (17-1 overall this year) and swept Przybyl's Sun Devils back to the interior.

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Nanaimo Park's SE diamond was finally open for business and the Cards were set to play host to Jon Przybyl's Kelowna Sun Devils. The day didn't start off as intended as O'Krafka had the unfortunate duty of letting the Sun Devils know that they took the wrong dugout, an hour and a half later McRae took the mound for the Cards in his first start of the still young season. McRae was set to throw the first pitch right before the sharp eye of veteran Max Yuen spotted that McRae was throwing off the Midget (60') rubber for the entirety of his warmup pitches. The mistake was fixed as #19 rocking an odd look with the long pants and two-piece stirrups underneath threw strike one to Ribbink. McRae would retire Kelowna's leadoff stick Ribbink on a quality 8 pitch at-bat before watching 2-stick and lefty Swift bloop one into left. The Cards' would roll yet another double play this time courtesy of Hendriks, Giesbrecht and Suzuki teaming up 6-4-3 to end the first half inning. Hendriks who had a subpar couple games against Kelowna up in the interior wasted no time jumping on Kelowna's starter Webber driving a fastball into left for a leadoff single. Hendriks would steal his way to 3rd scoring on a wild pitch during Tong's AB plating the first run of the game. 1-0 Cards after 1.

The second inning started off a little better for McRae, this time throwing off the correct rubber he would retire Wielders and Meekma on 2 pitches. Webber in an attempt to give the Cards a chance at a 3 pitch inning swung at the 3rd offering of the inning from McRae only to foul it off the newly renovated Nanaimo Park backstop fence. Nevertheless, it would only take McRae two more pitches to strike out Webber and reitre the Sun Devils side in order. West Coast would tack on a single run in the 2nd courtesy of a textbook SAC bunt from Giesbrecht who scored Heilker from 3rd, the first of 3 RBIs on the day for Giesbrecht. 2-0 Cards after 2.

McRae finished up a strong 3 inning start on the mound striking out Kai White to run his season inning count up to 8 innings with no runs allowed and averaging just under 1.5 K/inning, impressive numbers so far from the young southpaw from Coquitlam. The Cards again put the pressure on Webber with back to back singles leading off the inning courtesy of Hendriks and Suzuki. An incorrect read off Webber got Hendriks caught dead in his tracks as Kelowna would tag out #38 for his first caught stealing of the year. A promising inning that started with runners at 1st and 2nd with none out was suddenly was put to an end in just 3 pitches as Tong and Lefebvre would both be retired following the CS of Hendriks. 2-0 Cards after 3.

Former D6 little leaguer, Heilker took the mound in relief of McRae and was rudely welcomed by Kelowna's top of the order as Swift would collect his 2nd hit of the game, a double into deep left-centre as Wielders would plate Swift with a 2 out single bringing up Meekma. With Wielders moving on contact, Meeka hit a deep drive to left just out of the reach of Maunahan in left, Maunahan quickly weeded his way through the jungle high grass in the outfield and found the baseball throwing a strike to cutoff man Cody Hendriks at short who threw a seed to Lefebvre at home nabbing Wielders at the plate who didn't have a chance and ending the inning for the over-agressive Przybyl and his Kelowna squad. West Coast would get that run right back as Waters and Heilker would both record base hits to begin the offensive 4th, the former with a single and the latter with a ringing double. Maunahan would score Waters with a groundout to short. 3-1 Cards after 4.

Heilker would settle down in his second inning of work needing only 8 pithces to retire the Kelowna side. In the offensive 5th for the Cards, Hendriks would hit a hard double with 1 out his third hit in as many at-bats but Kelowna once again would pull off a deadly fake to 2 as Webber would catch Hendriks in no-mans land yet again completing the run down and giving the aforementioned Hendriks his 2nd CS of the game and of the year. That's as close as Kelowna would come as Duncan-Wu although as Kelowna's bench put it "we lit this guy up last time" couldn't touch the right-hander from Coquitlam as #7 would reitre all 6 batters he faced striking out 5 of the 6 and picking up his team-leading 2nd save of the year. 3-1 Cards your final. Tip of the cap goes to Kelowna's Webber who went 5 2/3 innings pitched throwing 95 pitches and limited West Coast to 3 runs in a quality start. - LY

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It seemed like the 4-game weekend for Kelowna finally caught up to them as the Cards put on a clinic at the plate in game 2. With Nanaimo Park's outfield grass getting taller every second, the coaching staff challenged the Cards' players letting them know if they lost then every player was expected to pluck 50 dandelions from the outfield post-game. Players from West Coast seemed to have heard the challenge loud and clear as they pounded out 9 runs on 14 hits in this contest. With O'Krafka taking over 3rd base coaching duties while Yam was at the NW diamond accepting the provincial-finalist banner from 2 years ago, the move seemed to spark the offence for West Coast which was quite dormant for all of the first game. Rogers, Yuen, Lefebvre put up back-to-back-to-back singles; Lefebvre with the only single that knocked in a run while Heilker would give the Cards their 2nd run courtesy of a SAC fly to left. Maunahan would help his cause out on the mound scoring two runs and giving O'Krafka the opportunity to get the arm going waving both Lefebvre and Waters home putting the Cardinals up 4 early. The boys rocking the classic Cardinal red jersey weren't done there as Giesbrecht with 2 out would plate Maunahan from 3rd with his 1st of 3 hits in this contest. Before Przybyl and his Kelowna boys could blink they were ambushed and staring at a 5 run deficit against arguably the best defensive team in the league.

Maunahan, one of three players on the provincial winning Vancouver Minor Peewee AAA team last season got the start in this one appeasing to all players, spectators and coaches in attendance for Vancouver Minor's annual opening ceremonies and family day celebration. Maunahan gave in a quality start going 3 IP 0 R 1 H 2 BB 3 K. West Coast would tack on one more in their offensive 3rd as Giesbrecht would nab his 2nd of 3 hits with a hard line drive single into left scoring Heilker. 4-0 Cards after 3.

Rogers would come in to relieve Maunahan in the 4th, the aforementioned Rogers would see right fielder Evan McRae move to the cutout behind the Cardinal third baseman in what would be West Coast's first extreme oppo shift of the year. The shift would almost back fire as Swift would pull a well-executed outside pitch from Rogers to Giesbrecht at 2 who did everything in his power to make sure the ball didn't travel to RF where no fielder was present, Swift would be retired on the groundball 4-3. Hendriks would pick up his 4th hit of the day and this time successfully make it around the bases single-handedly while a Lefebvre double to deep right-centre scored Yuen with ease. Maunahan's 3rd of 4 hits on the day would be an infield pop up that had the perfect trajectory to land in front of the shortstop scoring Lefebvre with ease. 9-0 Cards after 4. Rogers would finish the 4th and look good doing it striking out Williams to end a quality outing, 2 IP 0 R 1 H 1 BB 2 K. LHP Suzuki for the Cards would clean up the 6th and 7th inning and doing it in convincing fashion as the former New West LL put salt on the wound throwing 2 scoreless innings with an 85% strike ratio facing the minimum and striking out 2. He would also get Swift to groundout to SS with the oppo shift on yet again in the 7th making the potent left-handed bat of Swift 0-for-2 with the shift on. 2 pitches later, Suzuki would get Webber to ground out to Rogers at 3rd completing the season series sweep of Kelowna and yet another post-game onfield celebration for the West Coast Cardinals. - LY

The Cardinals improve to 11-1 this season good for 2nd in the league trailing the undefeated (12-0) Delta Orange Tigers who seem to be rolling and excelling at all facets of the game right now. The schedule now turns from a lighter side to a one where the Cards will be tested, on tap: 7 league games in the next 3 weeks and the annual Richmond Queen Victoria Invitational next weekend. The side West Coast has been put on for the Richmond tournament is no doubt going to be difficult, every game will be a dog fight and virtually a must-win but the Cards are looking forward to it and more importantly improve on their 2nd place finish at this Invitational last year. But first a double header date with Lorne Lafleur's Cowichan Valley Mustangs on Saturday, the only team to hand the West Coast Cardinals a loss this year.