Miners coaches will return for another summer

PALMER — Considering his team’s rocky month of July, Mat-Su Miners general manager Pete Christopher is pretty happy with the Miners’ second-place finish in the Alaska Baseball League.

But Christopher said his field manager, Brian Yocke, deserves a shot at winning a championship. So Christopher is bringing back a pair of coaches for another summer.

Following the end of the 2011 ABL season, Christopher announced Yocke and pitching coach Chris Gordon will return next season.

“He’s got a lot of energy,” Christopher said of Yocke, who has returned home to San Jose, Calif., to begin his tenure as the new head coach of his alma mater, Archbishop Mitty High School. “He never sits still. He’s probably the most hands-on coach I’ve ever had. He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty.”

Led by Yocke and Gordon, the pitching coach at Milligan College in Tennessee, the Miners capped the season with a six-game winning streak and 9-2 mark in their last 11 games. This came on the heels of a disastrous early July in which the Miners dropped seven games in an eight-game stretch and sank from first to third in the ABL standings.

The losses were compounded by a volatile situation in the clubhouse. Problems within the team led to the release of assistant coach Josh Renick who, Christopher said, was sent home for “conduct detrimental to the team.”

The Miners also lost a handful of players for the season due to injury, and two of their projected top pitchers signed contracts to play professional baseball early in the summer.

By the end of the season, Mat-Su had only 18 active players on the roster. The Miners would have 22 or 23 at the end of a typical season.

Christopher said it’s not just a testament to his remaining coaches, but his players.

“It says a lot about everybody actually,” Christopher said. “The character of the ballplayers that were left. It says a lot about Yocke and Gordon putting up with all of that stuff.”

Following Mat-Su’s 2-1 win over the Anchorage Bucs, Yocke said he was thrilled with the effort of his team during the final stretch of the season.

“The kids we have out here, the 18 guys we have left are the toughest, most competitive guys I think I’ve ever met,” Yocke said. “It’s been a privilege to work with them, a privilege to work with this community, these fans. It was all great.”

Christopher said Yocke and Gordon were not only successful on the field, but embraced the Miners’ value of community involvement.

“They were very, very receptive to what (my wife) Denise and I are trying to do,” Christopher said. “Public appearances, handing out tickets, pancake breakfasts. Some coaches balk at that.”

Christopher said any time players were needed for public appearances, Yocke had them there.

Yocke is a former Division I player and coach at San Jose State. After spending time on the San Jose State staff, Yocke accepted an offer to become the head coach of the Archbishop Mitty program he played for in high school.

Gordon completed his third season as an assistant coach at Milligan College in the spring. He was the team’s catching coach before he was promoted to pitching coach and recruiting coordinator.

“He knows his stuff,” Christopher said of Gordon. “He really handled the pitching staff very well.”

Gordon played at Milligan for four years.

The Miners will add a third coach to the staff for the 2012 season. Christopher said recruiting the next assistant will be a cooperative effort.

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com.