Five current, former Riverhawks taken by MLB teams

Five current and former Edmonton Riverhawks players are now major-league prospects.

Four of them had their names called in Wednesday's Major League Baseball draft — the first Riverhawks players to ever be selected in the annual professional picking of diamond hopefuls — while one was signed as a free agent.

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Former Riverhawks Ivan Brethowr, an outfielder with UC Santa Barbara, and Ryan Magdic, a pitcher with Missouri, had their names called in the seventh and 14th rounds during Tuesday's second day of MLB Draft action by the Chicago Cubs and the Oakland Athletics, respectively.

Current players Gavin Smith (infielder, 17th round by the Toronto Blue Jays) and Vicarte Domingo (pitcher, 19th round by the San Diego Padres) also had their names called Tuesday, while catcher Tommy Takayoshi was signed by the Athletics as a free agent.

Domingo leads all West Coast League (WCL) pitchers with a 0.93 earned-run average, allowing 17 hits over 29 innings of work to go with 32 strikeouts, while earning five wins in five starts this summer in the 16-team circuit.

"It's something I've been working my whole life for, so it feels great," Takayoshi, who hails from Spanaway, Wash., and played U.S. college ball most recently at Niagara University in New York state, told CTV News on Friday.

The 23-year-old will now report to the Athletics in Arizona for a physical and workouts before being assigned to a club in the major-league team's system.

In all, 54 former and current WCL players were taken in the MLB Draft, including first-overall selection Travis Bazzana, an infielder for Oregon State, by the Cleveland Guardians. Bazzana was named WCL most-valuable player in 2021 as a member of the Corvallis Knights.

The Riverhawks, who finished atop the WCL's North Division standings in the first half of the 2024 campaign, return to action Friday following a four-day break for the league all-star game in Bellingham, Wash. Five Riverhawks, including Domingo, were named to the North all-star squad.

Sunday game start time now earlier

The Riverhawks home game Sunday against visiting Springfield Drifters is now slated to start at 10:30 a.m. instead of 1 p.m. because of forecast hot weather.

The team announced the move Wednesday with temperatures expect to reach the mid-30s on Sunday afternoon.