WMBL’s top teams enjoying the ride so far

By Sean Rooney on July 3, 2018.

It’s been quite the ride so far for the best two teams in the Western Major Baseball League.

And you’d better believe the Medicine Hat Mavericks and Weyburn Beavers had Monday and Tuesday’s games at Athletic Park highlighted on the calendar for a while.

“They’re really important,” said Mavs shortstop Carson Johnson before Monday’s contest. “It’s big that we’re at home too. East versus West, two best teams, it’ll be fun.”

Each side entered the night with 20 wins —Medicine Hat with three losses to Weyburn’s five —and a ton of confidence. There are plenty of similarities but when you ask players on both benches, the biggest one isn’t necessarily how good they are skill-wise.

“I think the biggest thing comes down to seeing guys picking each other up,” said Weyburn relief pitcher Brodie Stairs, in his fourth and final year in the WMBL. “It’s always hard summer to summer, you’re bringing new guys in. I think just getting to know each other, getting to play with each other and learning what guys can do on and off the field… You start to mesh, start to become good friends.”

Weyburn won its first 13 games, but wasn’t blowing anybody out. Eight of those were one-run decisions and a couple ended with Beavers home runs. Their bullpen’s been clutch, as have the bats.

“Early on you get a good idea of what you have,” said coach Phil Curtis. “When you’re winning tight ball games, that brings everybody together. Once you see all that put together you know you’ve got something special.”

Medicine Hat lost its first two, but has since strung together two 10-game win streaks. The Mavericks boast the best team batting average in the league by a mile, their pitching staff is giving up less than three runs a game on average and the defence — notably Johnson showing great range in the infield — is markedly better than it was a year ago.

“Our first two games were a little rough but after that we clicked right away, jelled as a team,” said Mavs closing pitcher Tyler Shumpert. “Ever since then it’s been keep the ball rolling, whoever’s up is doing their job.”

Shumpert spent the last two seasons in Regina but was recruited by new Mavs head coach Andrew Murphy, who’d played at the same college. He’s 2-0 with three saves and a 1.80 earned run average out of the bullpen and is another of Medicine Hat’s key seniors, basically telling coaches he’s ready to throw every night.

The Mavericks and Beavers would like nothing more than to get to the league championship series a month from now, which is part of the reason they’re excited to play each other now. West and East teams don’t see as much of each other as they do teams in their own division.

“We’ve been waiting for these games, these are really big games,” said Shumpert. “You try to get to their bullpen, see what arms they have their and see how to attack their hitters. You want to see how this guy hits this, or this guy can’t hit this.

“We’re not going to see all their starters so if we get to their bullpen and see more of those arms, that’ll help us if we face them in the championship.”

Nobody’s counting their chickens before they hatch, however. Stairs has a bad taste in his mouth over last year’s playoffs, when eventual WMBL champ Swift Current erased a 2-0 Weyburn series lead to advance.

“I think we’re able to stay a bit more humble this year, especially with last year, we know what happened,” said Stairs. “We know we’ve still got a lot of work ahead of us.”

Medicine Hat ran out of gas against Edmonton in last year’s league semifinals, and got a good reminder Sunday from the reigning champion 57’s of how hard it’ll be.

“Last night (Sunday), we had trouble hitting the guy they were throwing so we had to find a way to win and did,” said Johnson, whose team erased a late-game deficit to win in 11 innings.

“It’s baseball, you know? Anything can happen.”

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