After a 14-3 regular season and a perfect 2-0 playoff record thus far, the Westlock 30+ Red Lions are gearing up for their championship series against the St. Albert Cardinals.
The final series pits the Alberta West Central Baseball Association’s top two teams against each other, and is slated to start Aug. 27 at Keller Field in Westlock.
Manager Keith Szautner said he feels the Lions are ready for any challenge the Cardinals may throw at them, given how well the team’s been playing in recent games. “We’re playing pretty solid baseball right now and it’s a good time of year to do it,” he said.
That said, Szautner is aware the Cardinals will prove to be a difficult foe to defeat. Of the three losses the Red Lions suffered all year, two came thanks to St. Albert. However, the games were both fairly close, with St. Albert outscoring Westlock 7-3 overall.
“They seemed to have our number this year,” he said.
Add in their season-opening 5-4 win, the Cardinals won the season series run tally 11-8.
Taking on the Cardinals in the championship series is being viewed as a chance to exact some revenge for those two losses, the first of which ended the Red Lions’ eight-game winning streak. Szautner added he likes their chances of doing that.
“If we play like we played our last games against Fort Saskatchewan, I like our chances,” he said, referring to the Red Lions’ sweep of the Red Sox, a series that saw Westlock win 16-2 on Aug 16 and 5-0 on Aug 20.
“We didn’t make any errors, our pitchers did a great job not walking guys and throwing lots of strikes,” he said. “Everything you’d want to do in baseball we were doing. It led to two very nice wins.”
Although the 16-2 win may have looked like a brutal beat down, Szautner said it came down to the Red Sox having one bad inning that the Red Lions were able to capitalize on.
Given the overall display of dominance the Red Lions put on, Szautner was unable to single out any one aspect of the team’s game, nor any one player, as being the catalyst of the series victory.
“All the guys, from top to bottom of the order, played really well,” he said. “Everybody’s having good swings and having good at bats and playing good defence.”
Having the offence and defence firing on all cylinders makes the Red Lions hard to beat, but Szautner said St. Albert has shown they’re a tough squad. “If they beat us when we play like that, good for them, they deserve it,” he said.
