For the first time in his senior baseball playoff career, pitcher Curtis Sawchuk doesn't have to leave his team in the lurch.
The Queensway Auto World Red Sox are favoured to win the best-of-five Prince George Senior Baseball League final series and Sawchuk is sticking around to the end.
The Red Sox take on the Inland Control & Services Tigers in Game 1 of the best-of-five series Tuesday night and Sawchuk has been tapped for the start. In the previous four seasons that wasn't an option for him this time of year. The senior league playoffs always happen at the same time college training camps begin and that means he's had to pack up and leave.
But now that he's graduated from Missouri Baptist with a business degree, the 23-year-old lefthander's NAIA college baseball days are behind him and his presence on the field makes the Red Sox a solid bet to win their second-straight PGSBL playoff crown.
"It's always been a big rivalry between the Tigers and Red Sox and unfortunately I've always had to go back to school for the past couple years, so this is actually the first final I've played in," said Sawchuk.
"It will be exciting and hopefully some people will come out and watch and we'll get a couple of good games of baseball in. We have a core group of guys who show up day-in, day out, especially Paul Wilson, Bucky Schmidt and especially Brandon Hunter. He's one of the best baseball players I can say I've played with and we just learn off each other. This is what we've built up all year."
In nine starts with the Missouri Baptist Wildcats this spring, Sawchuk put up a 5-0 record with a 3.38 ERA and 28 strikeouts and helped his team to its second-straight NAIA national championship tournament appearance. Since he came back home in May he's also been dependable with his bat, hitting second in the Red Sox order.
"It's nice to have our ace playing in the playoffs," said Hunter, who shares the pitching load with Fillion and offspeed specialist Marcel Belanger.
The Tigers are about to lose two of their best hitters, who are also exceptional assets with their gloves. Catcher Cole Laviolette leaves today for Taft College in California and pitcher/shortstop Justin Fillion has a flight booked Wednesday for Wisconsin, where he'll play NCAA Division 3 hockey and baseball at Marion University. Despite that, Sawchuk says there are no easy outs in a Tigers' uniform and he knows he'll have to be bring his best stuff to the field to beat them.
"They're solid and they've probably been the most committed team all year," said Sawchuk. "They have a lot of guys who have played competitive baseball."
Tigers centrefielder Angelo DeSantis said not having Fillion and Laviolette around will definitely hurt but the Tigers still have a potent batting order with the likes of Adam Norn, Chris Clark, James Haviland, Scott Atherton, Kris Kaesmodel, Lyle Boutin and Reg Barry swinging the lumber.
"We do have some depth on our team and we'll move some guys and we'll be alright," said DeSantis. "The Red Sox have lots of good hitters and one of the best pitchers in the league with Curtis Sawchuk, and Brandon Hunter,the best hitter and best player in our league. They have all kinds of problems for us. I suspect it's going to go four or five games and hopefully we'll come out on top."
Clark and Norn will take up the pitching slack in Fillion's absence.
Evan Potskin will be back this week on top of the Red Sox hitting order after playing for an Invermere team in the International Softball Congress world championship in Kitchener, Ont. They've also got Nolan Schwab, Amanda Asay, Jordan Patterson, Joe Flavel and Eric Robinson to keep the Tigers pitchers occupied.
The Tigers wrapped up their best-of-five semifinal series Thursday with a win in Game 4 over the Dawn Till Dusk Contracting Titans. The Red Sox needed four games as well to knock off the fourth-place Westwood Sports Pub Gladiators, who took Game 1 of the series.
The Sox went 16-4 in the regular season. Three of those losses came in the last week of the season. The Tigers finished up at 10-9.
"Playoffs is a different story, especially in the final," said Hunter. "Wins and losses don't matter, in playoffs it's time to shine. If we come out and swing it in a best-out-of-five we have a good chance of sweeping. But the Tigers area good team so we're not going to count them out of anything."
Game time Tuesday is 6:30 p.m. Games are also scheduled for Wednesday and Friday, and if necessary, Tuesday, Aug. 26 and Wednesday, Aug. 27.
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