It’s been a tough season for the Quality Foods Parksville Royals but with just six games remaining, there’s still a chance to make the B.C. Premier Baseball League (BCPBL) playoffs.
Mathematically, they’re still in the hunt but the Royals are running out of time.
In a season that’s seen the team struggle with the injury bug — not allowing them to play with a full roster all season — the Royals will finish the season without getting that chance as pitcher Owen Kelly went down with a sprained ankle that will see him on the shelf for the final six games.
“It’s been a rough season,” head coach Dave Wallace said.
“We’ve dealt with lots of injuries all season long and we haven’t been able to really get full use out of our entire roster. But it’s not an excuse; those injuries only take away players from playing in games. We’ve still got a team that can play baseball and unfortunately, we just haven’t really been able to find our groove and find that consistency we need to be winning games on a regular basis.”
The Royals are in last place in the BCPBL, five games behind the eighth and final playoff spot.
They need some help ahead of them in the standings though, as well as having to win at least five out of their six remaining games to really stand a chance.
“We’re still in this thing,” Wallace said. “We just need to win our remaining games, plain and simple, to give ourselves the best chance of getting in to the playoffs.”
“If we can win six of the six remaining games, that’s our best shot. But we need to at least win five of the last six to stand a chance to get in and then we’ll need those teams ahead of us to lose some games too.”
The Royals are in Surrey on Saturday to take on the White Rock Tritons for a double-header, then will head to Vancouver to take on the North Shore Twins, who they lost two games to this past weekend.Those two losses to the Twins meant that the Royals won’t have a chance to go to Quebec for the 2015 Canadian National U-18 Championships but will instead head to Yorkton, Saskatchewan for a different tournament where they will switch things up and represent B.C. in another U-18 tournament.
“It’s an exciting opportunity,” Wallace said. “To have the chance to represent B.C. as a team in a tournament is always an exciting deal and we’re going to have that chance.”
“It’s going to be a good measure to see where we stand against other teams across Canada and it’ll send us off into our Fall Ball season as well, which kicks off two weeks after we finish off that tournament in Saskatchewan.”
To close out their season, the Royals will be at home on July 18 for a double-header to take on the Coquitlam Reds at Inouye-Wallace Field.
