The team announced recently that head coach Rich Sorensen will be returning to the team for the 2020 WCBL campaign and will be joined by a familiar face on the sidelines in graduated outfielder Eric Marriott.
It’s all about continuity, said Express general manager Cory Olafson, and the Express doing what they can to build on last season.
“In this league, continuity with coaching is vital, if you’re hopping around from year to year with new coaches it’s tough to build a recruiting base and things like that,” Olafson explained. “So getting Rich back is nice, we know he’s familiar with the league and the program and everything like that.”
That same sentiment applies to Marriott, who spent the last two seasons with the Express and emerged as one of their top all-around players.
“He was kind of in my ear on and off all summer about coaching and stuff,” Olafson said with a laugh. “He’s just out of school and needs to cut his teeth in the coaching world, but he knows the game, he’s been a leader on the field for us the last two seasons and is kind of excited to be coming back as an assistant coach and we’re excited to be having him back.”
The whole plan will be to build on a team that showed plenty of potential but lost their final six games of the regular season to finish with a 26-30 record and fourth in the WCBL Eastern Division.
“We were right there, we were in every ball game and I think last year was a big adjustment for all teams with those extra games, playing the expanded schedule was taxing on pitching staffs and no team was different than us,” Olafson said, referring to the WCBL increasing the schedule to 56 games last season. “You had guys pitching some games who weren’t necessarily pitchers, guys who hadn’t pitched since high school and things like that… So last year was an adjustment period, the schedule’s remaining the same and I think teams will be recruiting a lot more pitching this season.”
The league will be maintaining the same number of games despite a massive change revealed at the WCBL’s league meetings in late October – the Melville Millionaires and Yorkton Cardinals will both be taking a one-year leave-of-absence and the Medicine Hat Mavericks will be moving from the Western to the Eastern Division.
“Whether either or both teams can put it all together and come back into the league remains to be seen, but it’s a daunting task with the schedule and how budgets have steadily, steadily increased over the last five to 10 years,” Olafson said. “It’s a big job to run a team like that in a community that small and it’s pretty expensive to run a team in a league that’s grown like this.”
The change for the Mavericks isn’t as extreme as it might seem when it comes to travel – their longest single jaunt is five hours to Weyburn, which will be a far cry from the eight hours they had to make to Fort McMurray multiple times a season in the past.
The move will give the two divisions five teams each, at least for one season. That’s because in 2021 an expansion franchise in Sylvan Lake, Alta. will play their first games in the Western Division.
The league also announced that the international rule for tiebreakers will be used during the regular season, with runners starting at first and second base to start the extra innings. The rule will not be in place for the playoffs.
