Mavs get up early, win a tight opener
By Sean Rooney on August 8, 2017.
srooney@medicinehatnews.com @MHNRooney
Every time there was a close play Monday night, it seemed a Medicine Hat Mavericks player was a split second ahead of the tag.
Hard-hit balls by the Edmonton Prospects landed comfortably in a Mavericks’ glove.
In playoff baseball, that can be all the difference.
The home team was just a bit better in a 5-3 win to start the Western Major Baseball League’s Western Conference finals, but both sides know the margin was slim.
“Both teams are very good, both are very competitive,” said Prospects coach Ray Brown. “It’s not like there’s a big gap between (them).”
“In a series like this where they have some really good pitching, every run’s going to matter,” added Mavericks’ bench boss Michael Thompson.
Brady Tedesco continued a string of excellent starts from the Mavericks’ pitching staff, going 7 2/3 innings and letting up three runs while striking out three. He got early help from a three-run first inning punctuated by Chris Caffrey’s two-run double to the right-centre field wall.
“A lot of fastball-changeup tonight, I was commanding pretty well,” said Tedesco, a lefthander who joined the Mavs mid-season and became an immediate go-to hurler. “Colton Wright (catcher) was calling a great game and I had great defence behind me.”
Caffrey also tripled in Wright in the third, then Louie Canjura doubled home David Salgueiro in the fourth.
Edmonton finally got on the board in their half of the fifth, Jake Lanferman caught off first base by Tedesco’s pickoff move but rounding the bases on a pair of throwing errors. A couple bunts moved Lanferman around in the eighth, Nick Spillman hit an RBI double to end Tedesco’s night but that was as close as the visitors got.
“We did enough to win tonight, played some great defence,” said Thompson. “Really happy with the way we came out on fire there, hopefully we can keep that going.”
Relievers Barry Caine and Connor Deeds combined to finish the job, with Deeds inducing a ground ball to Canjura that sent most of the crowd of 1,160 at Athletic Park home happy.
Medicine Hat only won the season series over Edmonton by taking the last two games at Re/Max Field a week and a half ago. That also wound up giving them home field advantage in the best-of-five series, which continues tonight (7:05 p.m., Athletic Park) before moving to Edmonton Wednesday and (if needed) Thursday.
Tyler Skinner will start tonight for the Mavs, while Brown will send Erik Sabrowski to the hill.
“We don’t have the power those guys have, so we’ve got to pick away, pick away,” said Brown, whose team beat the Mavericks last year to advance to the WMBL finals. “We gave ourselves a chance in the ninth, came up a little short but we’ll be here tomorrow.”
In the Eastern Conference finals, Weyburn downed Swift Current 12-4, banging 20 hits on the usually stingy 57’s pitching staff and getting a complete game win from Garrett Waters.
