The 2017 Fort McMurray Giants were a team that certainly had a lot of ups and downs. From a team that started the year 1-9 to a team that won a game in late June 25-5, this was a team that had loads of potential but in a short summer, teams must find that consistency very quickly.
The Giants finished off the season splitting a four game road trip that saw wins over Brooks and Lethbridge but two losses at the hands of the first place Okotoks Dawgs. The Giants went on a 7-3 run over their final 10 games to make a late season push for the post-season but sadly just ran out of time.
Despite another fifth place finish in the Western Division, a big bright spot on the second year franchise was an improvement in the win column. The Giants finished their inaugural season 16-32 and this year’s team was able to improve on that record by four wins, finishing the year 20-28. Eliminate the 1-9 start and this team played .500 baseball for the majority of the season which is good enough to make the playoffs in the Western Major Baseball League.
“Really couldn’t ask for much more from these guys, they made my job and the assistant coaches Kyle MacKinnon and Ian Sanderson, made our job easy in terms of locker room management and work ethic and practice. These guys want to get better, these guys put in the work in the gym everyday, we had a really hard working group here,” said Giants Manager Pat Riley when reflecting back on the season.
A number of franchise records were set this season including several from shortstop Max Hewitt. Hewitt played in 47 of 48 games this year and set the franchise mark for at-bats with 187 (5th in the league), tied Justin Bridgman for hits with 55, and shattered the RBI mark with 38 (7th in the league).
“The experience was unlike any other, they treated us so well here,” said Hewitt about his time in Fort McMurray. “The facility is first class, and they gave us a place to workout and train and gave us amazing families to stay with and the community was so accepting and supportive of the team.”
Infielder Keegan Marsden belted nine home runs this summer, breaking the previous mark of five from Michael Echavia and finished fourth in the league. Marsden had a three home run game in a 15-6 win over the Bombers July 27th. He also walked a league high 38 times. It took catcher Richard Ortiz a little bit to find his groove but when he did the Puerto Rican blasted five home runs in his final six games and picked up 11 RBI’s.
Outfielder Hector Benitez set the new mark for runs scored with 39 while Tyler Friis led the league in hit-by-pitch with 16.
On the mound, Fort McMurrayite Tyler Hodder had an incredible season leading the league with a 2.37 earned run average while tying for the league lead in wins with six. Hodder started nine games for the Giants, threw one complete game and worked 57 innings. The second year Giant was named a first team All-Star becoming the first first Giants player to make a WMBL All-Star team.
Pitching was never an issue on this year’s Giants team. The team boasted the fourth lowest ERA in the league at 4.62, on the other side of things, the bats at times went ice cold and it showed as the Giants had the third lowest batting average in the league batting just .258 as a team.
“It was pretty frustrating, we’re a lot of competitive guys who want to win and when those hits don’t come, it’s tough to win. A lot of it came down to just having a good quality at-bat and punching one through with two outs and we left a lot of guys in scoring position all year long in very important situations and in close ball games and that’s definitely one huge factor that was maybe a weakness of ours,” said Hewitt.
At the end of the day, the 2017 Giants were an exciting team to watch and gave fans something to cheer about. When asked if he would consider returning next summer to play for the Giants, the answer was easy for Hewitt.
“Absolutely, I’ve talked to Dutche (Iannetti) about that a little bit already in terms of plans for next summer.”
The Giants had four returning players on this year’s team, the hope is to return a good core of players next summer and continue to improve and give fans the opportunity to watch a high level of baseball.
“There’s something special here in Fort McMurray and it’s going to continue to grow and we appreciated everything this community did for us,” said Riley.
