‘A bad taste in your mouth’: Experienced Regina Red Sox hope to flip the script in 2025

WATCH: The Regina Red Sox are hoping experience can help them turn the page in 2025. Donovan Maess has the details.

This year’s iteration of the Regina Red Sox is hoping to change the narrative heading into the 2025 Western Canadian Baseball League (WCBL) season.

Regina dominated the league’s East Division last season, finishing with a 38-18 record, five games better than the second place Medicine Hat Mavericks.

However, come playoff time, the Sox were swept in the best-of-3 first round series by the four-seed Moose Jaw Miller Express – a bitter defeat fresh in the mind of Regina product Zander Oudie-Senger.

“I always watched the Moose Jaw and Regina rivalry,” the pitcher said. “Losing to them last year did hurt.”

“But it is baseball at the end of the day. I know if we stick to our game, we’ll make it far this season,” Oudie-Senger added.

Oudie-Senger is one of 15 returning players from last year’s roster that includes 2024 Most Outstanding Pitcher and All-Star Colton Anderson, as well as All-Star Outfielder Jackson Syring.

Infielder Matthew Fox also believes there is extra motivation coming into 2025.

“It felt like we were supposed to win and we just didn’t play as good as we should have,” Fox said.

“There’s a bad taste in your mouth,” Head Coach Rye Pothakos told CTV News. “We had a very nice ball club last year; we had a great regular season, and I think a lot of returners want to even the score a little bit.”

Regina has made the WCBL’s postseason consistently since 2010, but have just two championships in the last 14 years – last winning it all in 2012.

Despite all their regular season success, earning the top spot of its division seven times in that time span, the Red Sox have been swept in four-straight playoff series – including the 2019 league final.

“It is great motivation,” Pothakos said. “We have a real nice club this year. And for the new guys, they can follow the lead and get them comfortable.”

“We had a team good enough to take it all [last year], and we’ve got a lot of those main parts back,” Fox said. “We’ve got everything we need to win it all [this year].”

“You can tell over time [this team] is going to win a championship here,” Oudie-Senger said.

Regina gets their regular season started Thursday night against the Swift Current 57’s. First pitch is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Currie Field.

Moose Jaw Miller Express

Standing in the way of success for Regina is the team which eliminated them in last year’s playoffs – the Moose Jaw Miller Express.

The Millers finished fourth place in the East Division in 2024 with a 26-29 record.

Although each series presented a steep uphill battle, Moose Jaw defeated Regina and Saskatoon enroute to the league championship series.

“We were kind of up and down after finishing first in the division [in 2023],” Miller Express skipper Eric Marriott said, “We squeaked into the playoffs and got hot at the right time.”

The Millers would go on to lose the league final series 2-1 to Okotoks on a walk-off homerun in the 9th inning of Game 3.

“That could have been a one swing from us,” Marriott said. “And we could have been holding the trophy. If we do what we do continuously this summer, we should be right there at the end of the season.”

Marriott says there are at least seven players returning from the East Division pennant winning team.

“When we recruit players coming in, we let everyone know we want to defend the East and we want to make another run and win a ring,” the coach said. “[Other teams] know what we bring to the table.”

“We have made a name for ourselves and it’s a good game whenever the Miller Express are in town,” Marriott added.

The Millers open their season Thursday night on the road in Medicine Hat against the Mavericks.

Elsewhere in Southern Sask.

Meanwhile, the Weyburn Beavers and Swift Current 57’s will also be looking for different results in 2025 after both teams missed the playoffs in 2024.

For the Beavers, last season marked the third-straight campaign since the league resumed play post COVID-19 pandemic in which the team failed to make the postseason.

Prior to the 2020 and 2021 season suspensions, Weyburn had made three-straight playoff appearances from 2017 to 2019.

It is a similar story for Swift Current who missed the playoffs for the first time in 14 years, according to WCBL records which go back to 2010.

The 57s have 10 returning players, three of whom are seniors.

Weyburn gets their season started Thursday when they host the Saskatoon Berries. Swift Current is on the road in Regina.