A few hours before the Victoria Mariners and Victoria Eagles take to the Lambrick Park diamond tonight at 6:35 for their B.C. Premier Baseball League derby, Tyler O’Neill will step on to the Wrigley Field outfield making his MLB debut with the St. Louis Cardinals against the Chicago Cubs as the latest BCPBL alumnus to make the majors.
How’s that for inspiration? Or the inspiration of also knowing that Eagles pitching graduate Nick Pivetta is playing with the Philadelphia Phillies, continuing a BCPBL tradition in the bigs that includes Michael Saunders and Rich Harden from the Mariners and Brett Lawrie, Ryan Dempster, Larry Walker, Justin Morneau, Jeff Francis, Adam Loewen and James Paxton.
“This has been a great league,” said Mariners coach Mike Chewpoy.
“I remember O’Neill coming over to the Island with the Langley Blaze and hitting three grand slams against us in a weekend series.”
It still is a good league, as exemplified by last season’s Mariners star Jason Willow, the Baltimore Orioles draft pick now in the NCAA with UC-Santa Barbara, after captaining Canada to the bronze-medal game of the 2017 U-18 World Cup.
“You don’t replace a player like Jason Willow, who has been the best player I’ve coached besides Michael Saunders,” said Chewpoy, who has been at the Mariners helm since 2004.
That unenviable job of taking over the Mariners shortstop position has gone to Japanese transfer student Shuta Iraki, who appears more than up for the challenge.
“Shuta is a very good shortstop,” said Chewpoy.
Iraki is part of a solid Mariners infield that includes catcher Jon Gale and first-basman Chris Niketas. That’s the defence, but it’s on offence that the Mariners look especially strong this season.
“We’re very quick, with lots of speed, and we hit well,” said Chewpoy.
“We can pile up the runs, but can also score with small ball, if that’s what it takes.”
The Mariners bats are up against an Eagles pitching staff in this derby that includes aces Hayden Wilcox and Mike Musselwhite, the latter who was an emergency call-up last season for the Victoria HarbourCats of the West Coast League, and pitched some gutty relief innings against NCAA Division 1 batters down the stretch drive for the WCL runner-up ’Cats.
Starting on the mound for the Mariners tonight is Duncan Brens-Knight. The likes of hurlers Brens-Knight, Wilcox and Musselwhite have no shortage of BCPBL alumni mound talent to emulate, such as Pivetta, Harden, Dempster, Francis, Loewen and Paxton.
The Mariners, Eagles, Nanaimo Pirates and Parksville Royals are the four Island squads in the 13-team BCPBL. This is the Mariners’ first league game, although the 2018 schedule has already begun with Parksville off to a roaring start at 4-0 and Nanaimo at 2-2 and the Eagles 0-4.
The Mariners, last to start this regular season in the BCPBL, were 10-6 in the preseason with good showings in both the Kelowna and Best of the West tournaments.
“The top six this year in the league will be very strong with the rest of the teams very young. We see ourselves in that top six,” said Chewpoy.
The Mariners will have their home-openers this weekend when they host the Pirates on Saturday at noon and 2:30 p.m. at Layritz Park.
