The Guelph Silvercreeks were bronze medalists at last year’s national 22-and-under baseball championship tournament.
It’ll be decided this weekend if they get to go back to the national tournament to try to win medals of a different hue.
And they’ll get to play some of their provincial elimination tournament games in Guelph this weekend.
“We're lucky in the sense we don't have to go on the road,” Silvercreeks head coach Richard Zytner said. While he’s listed as the team’s head coach, Zytner’s quick to state that the team uses more of a coaching-by-committee approach involving the team’s five other coaches – Paul Cutten, John Lannutti, Fred Loder, Shawn Martens and Mark Smit.
The Silvercreeks are to play East York at Hastings Stadium today at 10 a.m. and they’ll play again in Guelph later that day at 4 p.m. If they win their opener, the Silvercreeks will play again at Hastings Stadium. If they lose, they’ll play at Larry Pearson Park.
While intimate knowledge of the fields will be a plus, it might not be the biggest thing.
“I think it's the boys can get up in their own beds, get up in the morning and do their normal routine instead of being on the road in a hotel,” Zytner said. “I'm looking forward to it and I don't play. I don't sleep well on the road anymore.”
The Silvercreeks will go into the provincial tournament a confident bunch after clinching a first-place finish in the Inter-County Baseball Association league last weekend. However, they do also have some concerns.
“There's peaks and valleys with any baseball team,” Zytner said. "Due to the weather, interesting weather I'll say, we had two tournaments and we got both of them rained out in the quarter-finals.”
That means the Silvercreeks missed out on chances to see how they perform in pressure situations against other teams that were also winning in those tournaments.
“That's a part that concerns me a little bit, not pushing someone on the pitching staff in those tight games,” Zytner said. “In the round robin (of a tournament) you always maybe have a weaker team and all that kind of stuff that you can get your way through, but being there on a Sunday you know the pitching staff's got to step up and I think due to that we haven't been able to push some of our guys. That's the part that worries me a little bit.”
In last year’s provincial tournament, the Silvercreeks used four starters in their first four games.
“That's huge,” Zytner said.
There’s a pitch-count rule in 22U baseball that states if a pitcher throws more than 45 pitches one day, he has to have a day away from pitching. If he’s under 45 pitches, he can still pitch the next day.
"I understand why,” Zytner said of the purpose of the rule. “I've coached when we didn't have pitch counts and some coaches abused their players.
"I'm worried about their arms. My son was a pitcher, so I know what that's all about. It's a long-term health for life. Yeah, winning is important, but health is more important."
Another thing of having playoff rounds in tournaments rained out this year is that the Silvercreeks missed out on chances of possibly seeing some of the teams in this year’s elimination tournament play.
“You ask those guys, I'm sure all 28 players have been looking at stats and all that stuff,” Zytner said. “They try to decide the game before it's played. Some of the guys on the coaching staff, they do some homework. I looked briefly the other night, but at the end of the day I always say you've got to play the game on the day that it happens. What they did before, who cares. Maybe they have someone who hadn't played for them all year. They got called up and throw a gem so you're thinking it's going to be an easy victory and then 'Where did that one come from?' Well, just play the game. That's how I look at it.”
The Silvercreeks are to start this weekend’s tournament with a game against East York Bulldogs Friday at 10 a.m. at Hastings Stadium. They don’t know much about the Bulldogs who lead the Toronto Baseball Association’s 22U league with a 16-5-1 record. The Silvercreeks are 12-4-1 in the Inter-County Association league.
While the Silvercreeks did win bronze at last year’s national tournament, they don’t feel that puts any extra pressure on them this year.
"I don't think so,” Zytner said. “It's a whole new bunch of guys. It was a lot of work to go.
"The kids want to go. We know what it's about now. You'd like to go and learn and we’ve had conversations in the off-season on how to prepare for that. Like anything, hindsight is 20/20. We learned a lot.”
They learned things in 2022 that helped with last year’s performance and they hope the same thing happens again this time around.
“Last year we won second place in the province, but the year before actually I think was a better team and just the way things -- baseball happened,” Zytner said. “I think we had, on paper, a better team but we lost a game we should have won and that would have put us a lot closer, but again we learned. Last year we get on a roll and baseball was in our direction so that was a good place to be.”
Another good place to be is at home playing on their home diamond.
“We're excited to have another chance and to be able to do it at home,” Zytner said. “I think that's a real bonus.”
Ontario is to send two representatives to the national tournament Aug. 1 to 4 in Dartmouth, N.S.
