The Westlock Grey Lions continued their early Alberta West Central Baseball Association season domination, handily defeating the Edmonton Heat 14-4 on May 20 at Keller Field.
Manager Keith Szautner said he was pleased by his team’s dominative effort in the game, which was called by mercy rule after six innings. The win improves the club to 2-0.
“Their pitcher did a nice job, but I think they left him in a bit too long and he was getting tired, so he made some errors and the boys can hit the ball when it’s left over the middle,” Szautner said.
Szautner said the Heat have proven themselves as a less-competitive team and the Lions wanted to keep the gas pedal down and claim the win.
“It was expected to beat that team. There has been in the league a little bit of a division of ‘A’ and ‘B’ at this level, and they’ve been in the bottom half of the league ever since we’ve been involved,” he said. “Not always 10-run wins, that was a little unexpected.”
The ability to cash in base runners at big moments of the game was a big factor in the Lions’ defeat of the Heat.
Pitcher Sheldon McGonaghy started for the Grey Lions, pitching the first three innings Szautner said he’s been impressed with pitching so far.
“Our pitchers are doing a really nice job, throwing lots of strikes and limiting the number of walks they give. That’s a big deal,” he said. “Make them put the ball in play. We have pretty good defence behind our pitchers.”
Moving along in the season, the Lions will continue to draw off their baseball experience as they take a run at another league title.
“We’ve got a lot of guys that have played a lot of baseball, we’re the ‘Old Red Lions’ for a reason,” Szautner said. “We’re not quite as athletic as we used to be, but we’ve played a lot of ball and we’ve got a lot of baseball knowledge. I like our chances every single game we play in this league.”
The club’s performance in the game wasn’t flawless; Szautner said the team will continue to work on their defence.
“It’s early in the year, but we made a few uncharacteristic errors in the field, they didn’t come back to haunt us,” he said. “If we can also keep the walks down, I think they scored two on a couple walks, but that was about it.”
