You’ve got to be quick on your cleats in summer collegiate ball.
Not only on the diamond, but in the dugout and management offices. Players come in and out like bees around a hive.
The Victoria HarbourCats will be minus two of their key players, who are lost for the season to injury. Six-foot-five pitcher A.J. Block from the Pac-12 Washington State Cougars was 2-0 with a downright stingy 1.92 ERA with 25 strikeouts and only 12 hits allowed and seven walks in 231Ú3 innings pitched in six appearances. Third-baseman Davis Wendzel from the Big-12 Baylor Bears hit .316 in 10 games.
Block was the scheduled starter tonight for the HarbourCats in Kelowna, throwing Victoria’s rotation into disarray.
“Injuries happen in summer ball, spring ball, fall ball and winter ball,” said Victoria head coach Brian McRae.
“You have to deal with them in any league at any time. Nothing surprises us. We have back-up plans. We will piece it together.”
Shutting down injured players immediately is of prime importance in a summer collegiate circuit like the West Coast League, where all the players are on loan from university teams.
“We are only borrowing the players,” said HarbourCats GM Brad Norris-Jones.
Reputation counts for everything in leagues such as the WCL, when NCAA teams look for teams on which to place their players for the summer.
“We want the players’ [NCAA] teams reporting no problems when we return them,” added Norris-Jones.
The HarbourCats head to the Okanagan for a three-game set against the Falcons (16-10). Victoria is 15-13 overall and 1-0 in the second half of the season.
The WCL North Division playoffs will consist of the winner of the first half of the season — Kelowna, Walla Walla, Bellingham and Wenatchee were fighting it out for that crown in Monday night action — playing the winner of the second half of the season.
“The system is such that we have already passed the first-half finish line while those other teams were still reaching the finish line [Monday] night,” added McRae, about the way the playoff berths are decided.
The HarbourCats are on a five-game winning streak, but only the last of those really counted for a Victoria team that must win the second half of the regular season in order to be the second playoff team in the North Division.
Looking ahead, McRae saw some top priorities to address. He said the offence right now is better than the defence. But even that suddenly-potent offence has an issue.
“We are a left-hand dominant hitting team that faces a lot of left-handed pitching,” noted McRae, a former 10-season major-leaguer.
The HarbourCats return to Royal Athletic Park on Friday to being a three-game set against the Bend Elks from Oregon.
