Cardinals' Season Recap, Playoff Preview

Yorkton Cardinals (15-21) vs Swift Current Indians (26-10)

Cardinals' Coach Bill Sobkow discusses the regular season looks ahead to Swift

CS: You guys started the season off hot, and cooled off a little toward the end, finishing 6 games under .500. What do you think was the difference down the stretch?

Bill Sobkow: I think the difficulty in this league Craig, is the league is very, very competitive. So every team plays excellent baseball, they have excellent personnel, and you must be at the top of your game all the time in order to win consistently. I think we were below our game there for a while, and the other teams took advantage of our downfall. Having said all that, people must realize that these players are capable of coming back and playing good baseball like we did in the last couple, three games.

CS: Heading into playoffs, when you have only 7 pitchers on the staff right now, is it important that you get a lot out of those pitchers? A good example was Jordan Herbison going the distance in your last home game, gave everyone else a rest, do you look for performances like that when you're playing everyday in the playoffs?

BS: Either that, or pitchers share each ball game, 3, 4, 5 innings. If you don't pitch that much today, then you can come back in a day or two and take up the slack. So it's either the longevity of a pitcher in a particular game, or else sharing the duties.

CS: With Nick Longmire no longer with the team, arguably your biggest bat, do you play more small ball, more buts, steals, advancing the runners, more of that than relying on the long ball?

BS: Well I don't want to attribute all our offense to Nick Longmire, because not only have we lost Nick, but we've lost Zach Anderson who led our team in home runs with 7, he ended up being injured at the end of the season, and also having to go back to arrange all his schooling in a brand new school, so that has been a tremendous blow to us. Then, Sean Sullivan ended up getting a hamstring injury so we've lost 3 key players, our centre fielder, our right fielder and our second baseman, in other words batters 2, 4, and 6 out of the lineup.

CS: Has anyone impressed you in their absence over the last week or so?

BS: It's given some of the players who haven't played as much an opportunity to get into the lineup, like Ryan Smith for example, he's hit the ball fairly well. His defensive play hasn't been the best because his range of motion isn't all that good, he's struggling with his ACL tear that happened last year. He needs more rest, but he's forced to play. Some of the other players like Logan Kachur and Brian Burton, they certainly have to step up for us and do a good offensive job for us in order for us to shine in the playoffs.

I'd also like to point out that we started with 21 players for 2008, and we had 2 local players at the start of the season, Kurt Karcha, who decided to go play junior ball for another season, and Chad Elmy who played one game, and then ended up forgoing the season for his own personal reasons, but that was a fairly big blow for us right off the beginning. When you lose local guys like that right off the beginning, it restricts you, we were scrambling for an extra player to pick up the slack, we found Taylor Lee and that helped. But I would like to say our Canadian players from Ontario sure did a good job this year, Brian Burton, Mike Goemens, Chris Cox, Robert Ramsdale, all from Ontario, they did an excellent job for us.

CS: And Herbison's an Ontario guy too right?

BS: Yes! I knew I was forgetting someone, I knew we had 5, and Jordan has really picked up his play, as a matter of fact he ended up being our best player last year at this time. He ended up winning one game against Melville that was really critical in the playoffs. Jordan has fit in to our team, once again, very well.

CS: And, you're playing Swift Current in Round One, best team in the league at 26-10, but everyone starts at zero now hey?

BS: Absolutely. They're an offensive team, and more so than that, they are a veteran team. Their philosophy there is to recruit players in their Junior or Senior year, and together with their local players who have tremendous skill, and tremendous longevity, they're a great organization. Basically it's a bunch of veterans playing against a bunch of good ball players, but more or less just starting out in the Western Major Baseball League.