As the North Saskatchewan River Baseball League heads into the final 10 days of the season, several teams are looking at the standings and calculating the "what ifs" and possible tie breakers.
The Lloydminster Meridian Twins and Meadow Lake White Sox sat on top of the standings with 10-2 records. Meadow Lake beat the Midwest Expos 17-0 and the North Battleford Beavers 3-2 last week to keep pace with the Twins who beat Unity 13-3 and St. Walburg 11-1.
Locally, the North Battleford Beavers earned a big extra inning victory over the Wilkie Brewers Tuesday. The Beavers trailed 3-2 and were down to their last out when Jared Inkster sailed the ball deep to left-centre field. The ball hit the centre-fielder's glove and Inkster slide in safely at second base. The Beaver went on to tie the game and scored two runs in the ninth inning. Kyle Gregoire earned the win on the mound and Rory Gregoire came in to earn the save, as he faced one batter.
Like the Beavers, the Unity Cardinals are also positioned nicely in the middle of the standings. They won 8-3 over Kindersley earlier in the week to clinch a playoff spot with two games remaining.
Wilkie has lost three straight games to fall to eighth in the standings, but with a logjam and some key head-to-head games remaining, and the standings could still change drastically from fourth to eighth.
The bottom three teams, Mervin, St. Walburg and Standard Hill, are all out of the playoff hunt while the Midwest Expos are still mathematically alive.
Mervin won their last two games - 9-0 over the Border City Blue Jays and 8-7 Wednesday against St. Walburg - earning their first two wins of the season.
Standard Hill also recently picked up their first win, that coming in a 4-2 win June 28 over St. Walburg.
With standings so close and the season nearly over, the NSRBL executive released a memo regarding the league's tie-breaking procedure. The guidelines are: wins and losses in the head-to-head matchup between tied teams, runs for and against in the head-to-head match up and finally runs for and against the entire league.
With the standings as tight as they are, expect this formula to come into play, as playoff matches will be set and the post-season should begin the week of July 16.
