Miners earn one of 4 spots in ABL postseason

PALMER — As any club, the Mat-Su Miners have a checklist of team goals. Tuesday, the Miners crossed one off that list.

Alaska Baseball League-leading Mat-Su is playoff bound.

“Now it’s trying to clinch home field (advantage),” Mat-Su head coach Ben Taylor said. “We’re pretty happy to punch the playoff ticket.”

Knowing Mat-Su, which entered Thursday’s game against the Anchorage Glacier Pilot with an ABL-best 22-15 mark in league play, is one of the four teams that will compete in the postseason helps with some decision-making, Taylor said.

“It helps with some pitching decisions, things like that,” Taylor said.

Through play Wednesday night, Mat-Su held a 1.5-game lead over the Peninsula Oilers (19-15) and were 2.5 games ahead of the Pilots (21-19). Including Thursday night’s home game against the Pilots, the Miners have seven regular season games left until the two-round playoffs, which start Aug. 4.

“We’ve got to play good baseball, treat all of the games like they’re extremely important, because they are,” Taylor said. “These games have a lot of meaning. We’ve got to tighten up a little bit, do some things a little better, keep grinding away.“

Taylor said there are areas to improve, but the speech to the players has not changed.

“We talk about the same things at the end of the year, middle of the year, beginning of the year,” Taylor said. “We have a system of how we do tings, what we believe in. It’s all about staying the course. That’s what this game is about, staying the course.”

Bucs slip past Miners

Anchorage scored at least one run in five consecutive innings en route to a 6-5 ABL win over the Miners Wednesday night at Hermon Brothers.

“It was a good ball game. A couple of bounces one way or another for either team, and it could be a different game,” Taylor said.

Mat-Su led 4-0 after two innings.

Michael Donadio led Mat-Su at the plate, finishing 3 for 5, with a run and an RBI. Levi Jordan, Garrison Schwartz and Cam Montgomery also finished with an RBI. Jordan, Schwartz, Jacob Hughey and Angelo Armenta also scored runs for the Miners.

Miners bomb Bucs

Mat-Su used a seven-run eighth to complete a 20-5 shellacking of the Bucs Tuesday night at Hermon Brothers Field in Palmer.

All 11 Mat-Su players who had at least one at-bat in the win finished with a hit. Mat-Su had 24 total hits, seven for extra bases.

“Our hitters and our job on offense is to get the next man up,” Taylor said in a press release issued by the team. “These guys have bought into that approach, and it’s really unselfish. When they play for each other like that, it’s really fun to watch.”

Jacob Hughey paced the Miners from the leadoff spot, finishing 4 for 6 with four runs scored. Levi Jordan, in the No. 2 hitter in the batting order, was 3 for 5, with two runs and three RBI.

“As a lineup, when one guy gets a hit, the next guy competes a little harder to get the next guy up to,” Jordan said in the release. “We were moving the lineup along and everyone was getting hits and we were all having a good time.”

Michael Donadio and Andy Cosgrove added three hits each for the Miners. Jake Scudder tallied two hits and three RBI. Cosgrove and Brooks Stotler scored three runs each. Ten of the 11 Miners who saw action scored at least a run, 10 players also drove in at least a run. Nine of the 11 finished with at least one hit, one run and one RBI.

Twenty runs is the most scored in a single game during Taylor’s four seasons as head coach. It’s also the most since Mat-Su tallied 16 runs during a 16-8 win over the Alaska Goldpanners July 11, 2012.

With the ample run support, Stephen Kolek earned the victory on the mound, scattering seven hits and five runs over seven innings. Kolek also fanned seven and did not walk a batter.

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