George Farelli
Special to the Record
It’s less than a six-hour trip to Langley from Comox by road and boat.
Yet Langley’s Brett Lawrie and Comox’s Taylor Green wound up in the same place.
They began the season in the minors, finished in the majors — Lawrie playing third with the Toronto Blue Jays, Green coming off the bench with the Milwaukee Brewers — and now the two have been linked together again.
They will share the Canadian Baseball Network’s first Randy Echlin Memorial Award, named after the former Ontario Supreme Court Justice who passed in August after years of running the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame selection committee.
CBN Pitcher of the Year honours went to Mark Hardy (Campbell River) who in his second year as a pro soon became the workhorse for the single-A Ft. Wayne TinCaps, making 27 Starts. He won 11 games (most by any Canadian at the affiliated minor league level), dropped 10 and in 129 1/3 innings pitched, surrendered only 40 earned runs, ending the season with a neat 2.78 ERA.
Both Green and Hardy are products of the Parksville Royals’ system and Dave Wallace’s coaching in particular. The BC Premier League has coaching legends like Bill Green, John Haar and Doug Mathieson who have touched the lives of thousands of youngsters, but the hours Wallace puts in at the diamond can’t be overlooked.
A total of 121 Canadians played on minor league teams in 2011, while another 48 played for independent league teams.
Both hitters played the same position and followed similar paths this summer, each enjoying a breakout season. They were good enough in both cases, to merit promotions to the majors.
Lawrie made his debut the Blue Jays on Aug. 5 while Green made his Major League debut wth the Brewers on Aug. 31. Ironically, both achieved their first Major League hit in their respective debut game.
Green put up some excellent numbers with the Nashville Sounds, in 94 games and 420 at-bats he had 141 hits, scored 74 runs, while hitting 36 doubles, 22 homers, 88 RBIs and a .336 average. Green earned Pacific Coast League all star honours and played in the Triple-A all-star game in Salt Lake City, Utah.
With the Brewers, he appeared in 20 games and produced a very respectable .270 average. His success this year may have been slightly overshadowed by fellow countryman Lawrie, but there is no doubt Green has proved conclusively that he is a potential Major League player.
Lawrie not only made the transition to a new organization, but soon after began the process of moving from second to third, and this move to a new position in the Blue Jays organization was accomplished without affecting his offensive output.
Following up on a great year in 2010 with the Double-A Huntsville Stars, in 69 games with Triple A Las Vegas he had 292 at bats, scored 64 runs, hit 24 doubles, 18 home runs, with 61 RBIs and .353 average.
He continued his excellent productivity playing 43 games with the Blue Jays, and in 150 at-bats he had 44 hits, including nine home runs and 25 RBIs, with a .293 average. Pretty remarkable, for a 21-year-old rookie.
Hardy, 23, a former Comox Valley Blizzard and University of British Columbia Thunderbird, is beginning to show a strong potential to develop into a future front line starter for the Padres.
His toughest rival and finishing a close second was Andrew Albers (North Battleford, Sask.) who was a very shrewd free agent signing by Minnesota Twins scout Tim O’Neill prior to the 2011 season.
Both Hardy and Albers were key members of the Team Canada pitching staff at the 2011 Pan American games in Mexico and made significant contributions to a gold medal winning performance. This capped off what was obviously a terrific season for both of these young pitchers.
Reprinted with permission of CanadianBaseballNetwork.com.
