The 2022 PBL Season Nears

The Powerline Baseball League Executive and teams met on Wednesday night to discuss the upcoming 2022 season and what the first normal season since 2019 will look like. 

A new team will be joining the PBL for 2022, the Battle River Rivals. The team was formed in 2018 with members of the Heisler Cardinals and the Spring Lake Lakers put aside their on/off field differences, similar to the Ryley Rebels and Bardo Athletics in 2017, to form the Rivals.

It is a welcome sight to the PBL who earlier in the week were informed that both the Camrose Axemen and the Edmonton Expos would not be returning for the 2022 season.

For the Axemen it has been a slow falling apart after nearly a decade and a half of smooth operation which started to derail in 2018 as the team started to transition the leadership group. The transition didn't appear to work with the Axemen limping through the 2019 season after missing the playoffs in 2018, their first season back in the PBL after much of the team wanted to only play in the Camrose area. After the 2020 season was lost to the Covid-19 pandemic there was hope that the team would be back in 2021 however once again the team was unable to organize for the season telling the PBL they would be back next year. Well it is next year and the Axemen are not back. 

It was an up and down run for the Edmonton Expos since joining the league in 2018 after players left the Sherwood Park Athletics team to form their own franchise. The core of the Expos struggled to expand and too often included part time players filling in for a game here and there, even if it meant grabbing a player who played on another team. Despite making the playoffs through the Wild Card Game in 2018 and 2019, the Expos struggled moving past the Holden Blue Jays. Losing the Wild Card Game 6-0 in 2018 to the Jays before being swept in a PBL Semi-Final Series againt Holden in 2019 after they managed to defeat the Tofield Braves in the Wild Card Game that season. The writing appeared to be on the wall in 2021 for the Expos who were a late entry into the PBL before having to suffer through games shorthanded and included picking up a couple of forfeits. 

But fans are excited to see the Battle River Rivals enter the league to give the PBL six teams in 2022 with the Camrose Roadrunners, Rosalind Athletics, Tofield Braves and Vegreville Blue Jays joining the Rivals and the 2021 PBL Champion Armena Royals for the year. 

The Powerline Baseball League will begin it's 84th season with games on the May 14th weekend across the league as teams will play a 15 game season before heading into playoffs.