Vancouver Canadians have playoffs in their sights heading into stretch drive

Article content

The Vancouver Canadians will look to extend their five-game winning streak and their lead atop the Northwest League second-half standings when they kick off a six-game road series against the Eugene Emeralds in Oregon on Tuesday.

Article content

The Canadians (23-12) are in first place in their high-A league with five weeks to go in the 66-game second half. Second-place Eugene (22-14) trails by a game and a half but have already qualified for the best-of-five league championship series via winning the first-half pennant.

The Spokane Chiefs (17-18) are third in the second half, six games behind the C’s going into Tuesday.

Vancouver finished the first half at 30-33, good enough for fourth place and eight games in back of Eugene.

If Eugene, a San Francisco Giants farm team, wins the second half, the team with the next best overall record in the six-team loop faces them in the playoffs. Vancouver (53-45) leads there, two and a half games in front of Spokane (51-48).

Article content

The second half began June 24. Vancouver, which won nine in a row from July 9-22, lost the opener of its six-game set against the Tri-City Dust Devils at Nat Bailey Stadium last Tuesday and then ripped off five consecutive wins.

With few exceptions, teams are playing six-game series from Tuesday to Sunday in the minors and then travelling on Mondays. It’s due to Major League Baseball trying to add structure and consistency to the minors, which came with a  revamping of the farm system set-up two winters ago.

The C’s, a Toronto Blue Jays’ farm club since 2011, are on road next week as well, visiting the Everett AquaSox. They’re home to the Hillsboro Hops Aug. 23-28, visit Spokane Aug. 30-Sept. 4, and then wrap up the regular season hosting Eugene Sept. 6-11.

Article content

The C’s have been led of late by catcher Andres Sosa, who is hitting .462 (6-of-13), with one home run and five runs batted in for his last five games. Outfielder Dasan Brown is at .333 (7-for-21), with five stolen bases, in his past five games, and third baseman Damiano Palmegiani has three homers and eight RBI, to go with a .205 average, in his past 12 games.

Brown and Palmegiani are among the players who have joined Vancouver midway through the season.

Brown, 20, was a 2019 third-round choice by the Blue Jays. He moved up to Vancouver from Dunedin on July 22.

Palmegiani, 22, was a 2021 14th-round draft pick by Toronto and the Surrey product has been with the Vancouver since the Blue Jays promoted him from the single-A Dunedin Blue Jays on June 21.

Article content

In 35 games with Vancouver, Palmegiani is hitting .246, with eight homers and 24 RBI. He’s second on the team in homers on the season, trailing the 14 put up by infielder Addison Barger, whose 69-game run with the C’s ended July 11 when he was promoted to the double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats. Barger, who hit .300 with the C’s, still leads the team in RBI (53). Infielder Miguel Hiraldo, who has been with the team all year, is next best (42).

Barger has been even more potent at the plate with New Hampshire, where he’s hit .400, with four HRs and 14 RBI, through 21 games.

Among the pitchers who have left Vancouver for New Hampshire this season are left-hander Ricky Tiedemann, 19, and righty Yosver Zulueta, 24, who both represented the Blue Jays at Futures Games at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on July 16.

Article content

This is Vancouver’s second season as a high-A team, getting bumped up along with five of their seven rivals from the old short-season, single-A Northwest League ahead of last year. Border travel restrictions brought about by COVID-19 forced the C’s to play their home games last summer out of Hillsboro, Ore., sharing a ballpark with the Hops.

They had played short-season, single-A since 2000 and had four league championships. The first came in 2011, which was their inaugural year as a Blue Jays’ farm team. They had been an Oakland Athletics affiliate prior to that.

[email protected]

twitter.com/SteveEwen

More news, fewer ads, faster load time: Get unlimited, ad-lite access to the Vancouver Sun, the Province, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites for just $14/month or $140/year. Subscribe now through the Vancouver Sun or The Province.