The Canadians final home-stand of the regular season begins Friday and it could be their most important of the summer. Or it could be an anti-climactic goodbye to this season's players.
Vancouver hosts the league-leading Everett AquaSox and will have to win all three games to stay alive. But first, they need a win tonight against Tri-Cityand a helping hand from Spokane, which hosts Everett tonight and Thursday.
If Everett wins one more game and Vancouver loses one more game, the C’s season is done.
Sitting four games back with five remaining on the schedule, the pressure is on and the mood is focused but not edgy, said C’s manager John Schneider.
“They know that it’s win at all costs right now,” he said. “It’s not tense, it’s kind of business as usual. The overall mood is good. It’s the same as it has been. It’s just a reminder that the way the league is set up, it gives you a chance no matter how you’ve done over the course of the year to have a shot at the end of the year.”
The Northwest League season is split into first and second halves. For each 38-game half-season, both the South and North divisions declare a winner based on a team’s win-loss record. Also in both divisions, the respective first- and second-half winners play for the pennant. The two divisional pennant winners play for the Bill Freitas Cup and the Northwest League Championship.
Schneider said the league structure is well suited to inexperienced players competing over a short season with unpredictable lineup changes. And it means young prospects have more opportunities to play high-pressure baseball, even if that comes six weeks into a 12-week season.
“Splitting the season up in two halves is good because there is so much roster turnover for first-year players, being new to professional baseball and getting signed maybe at a lower level and coming up to us and getting their feet wet,” said the manager Wednesday from Pasco, Wa. “Some organizations kind of tailor their construction of the roster towards that set up — first-half, second-half. We’ve done it in the past and we continue to try to do it that way. And I like it because whenever you can play meaningful baseball and competitive games at the end part of the year, that’ really good from a development standpoint.
“When you’re playing meaningful games at the end of the year, you can’t replicate that feeling and those circumstances over the course of a minor league season. It’s a pretty cool setup and we’ve been fortunate over the last four years to be playing very meaningful games in September. Hopefully we can keep that trend going.”
In the first half of the North Division earlier this summer, the Canadians finished fourth out of four teams with 16 wins and 22 losses. Tri-City won the division and Everett came second.
The C’s have competed for the Northwest Championship five years in a row and came away victorious in 2011, 2012 and 2014.
Vancouver could know its fate tonight. But if the C’s start Friday’s home-stand three games behind Everett, then Vancouver controls its own future by sweeping their guests out of Nat Bailey Stadium and claiming a place in the playoffs.
“Man, we’re just trying our best to make it so those games mean something, games one, two and three against Everett mean something,” said Schneider. “We love playing here and the support we get is just unwavering and we appreciated it so much. The goal is to get there and have that first game against Everett mean something, but you can’t look ahead past the next two here in Tri-City. The guys know what’s on the table and it’s an exciting thing but at the same time, it’s baseball so it’s one day at a time. Hopefully when we get back, we're playing a very important game that first night.”
The C’s play tonight and tomorrow against the Tri-City Dust Devils, who are tied with Vancouver for second place behind Everett. As the first-half winners, the Dust Devils will play the second-half winner in the first round of the playoffs for the North Division pennant.
The C’s three-game home series begins 7:05 p.m. Friday, Sept. 4 at Nat Bailey Stadium. Saturday’s game is at 7:05 p.m. and Sunday’s begins at 1:05 p.m.
