Tanner Cable played his first season in professional baseball with the Gateway Grizzlies in 2017. (Photo courtesy Gateway Grizzlies)

by Cedric Williams
Senior Editor

The Gateway Grizzlies added two more players to their roster on Thursday, after selecting pitchers Cody Thompson and Tanner Cable in the Frontier League Dispersal Draft. The draft was held to allocate the non-Canadian players on the rosters of the Ottawa Titans and Trois-Rivieres Aigles, the Frontier League’s new Canadian expansion teams that will be unable to participate in the 2021 season due to ongoing uncertainty regarding the reopening of the United States-Canada border.

The players on those team that are from Canada, along with the Canadian-born players that were on the Quebec Capitales roster were all matched together one team that will play as the Province of Quebec this season. The players that weren’t selected in the draft will become free agents.

The first player Gateway selected was Thompson, who the Grizzlies took with the eighth pick in the draft. A 24-year old righthander whose originally from Mechanicsville, Va., Thompson is entering his second season of professional baseball after playing the 2019 season with the Southern Illinois Miners.

During that year, Thompson appeared in 16 games for the Miners — 13 of them as a reliever — and had a 3-2 record, with a 4.97 ERA in 41 2/3 innings pitched. He allowed 23 earned runs on 45 hits, with 32 strikeouts and 24 walks.

Thompson was expected to be a solid reliever out of the bullpen for the Ottawa team this summer and will be given the chance to do the same for the Grizzlies.

Gateway took Cable with the 17th pick in the draft and he is entering his fourth season in professional baseball. Cable played his rookie year for the Grizzlies back in 2017.

That year, the 6-foot-5, 210-pounder from Hernando, Miss., had a 4-4 record, with a 3.81 ERA in 32 appearances, all out of the bullpen. Cable had 46.0 innings pitched, and allowed 20 earned runs on 33 hits, with 46 strikeouts and 45 walks.

Most recently, Cable made 25 appearances, two of them starts, for the 2019 River City Rascals team that won the Frontier League championship that year. Cable had a 1-4 record, but did improve on his strikeout/walk numbers, with 49 Ks and just 21 walks in 37 2/3 innings pitched.