Miners open season with win over Pilots

PALMER — Fifty degrees, some wind, a little rain.

It’s not the type of weather Nash Knight is used to seeing on a typical June Monday night in his home state of Texas. But the cold and damp didn’t seem to bother the Mat-Su Miners infielder.

Knight collected a pair of hits and scored two runs to help the Miners post a 6-3 win over the Anchorage Glacier Pilots in Mat-Su’s season-opener at Hermon Brothers Field Monday night.

“It’s about 100 (degrees) back home,” Knight said after the win. “It’s a big difference. But it ain’t too bad. I like it up here.”

Knight was one of five players to grab a pair of hits for the Miners, who finished with a dozen hits overall.

“Everyone had a good approach today, did their job,” Knight said.

Mat-Su first-year head coach Chris Gordon was thrilled to see that type of offensive production on Opening Day.

“Twelve hits the first time you play, you’ve got to be impressed with that,” Gordon said. “The guys had a good approach, were using the whole field. There were a lot of hard hit balls to the middle of the field.”

Knight, Chris Taladay, Clint Freeman, Branden Berry and Eric Harbutz each collected two hits in the win. Taladay and Berry drove in two runs each.

Anchorage led early, but Mat-Su took control of the game with a three-run third. Knight led off the inning with an infield single and Justin Maffei followed with a bloop single to center field.

Later in the inning, Taladay came through with a two-run single, but the key at-bat in the inning may have been a Bill Cullen sacrifice bunt.

With both Knight and Maffei on, Cullen put down a textbook bunt to put both runners in scoring position. The left-handed hitting Taladay followed with a single to the opposite field.

“You look back and that was the turning point of the game,” Gordon said. “Those guys were fighting and clawing, kind of like we were. To be able to put us in a position where a big hit really kind of put the game way, that was great. Bill laid down a great bunt.”

Later in the inning, Freeman scored on Berry’s double to left field.

Berry finished with a pair of extra-base hits in the win. The University of Washington freshman tripled in the seventh to drive in Taladay.

Knight also singled and scored on a Maffei double in the fourth.

The Glacier Pilots took an early 1-0 lead with Nick Backlund’s run-scoring single in the top of the first, but the Miners tied the score in the bottom of the inning. Cullen singled and scored on a Freeman single to knot the score at 1.

Mat-Su used four pitchers in the game, as planned.

“We wanted to be able to bring those guys back for the first game in league play,” Gordon said. “We want to make sure none of those guys are burned out.”

Ross Mitchell, Peter Kaplan, Jimmy Reed and Jay Calhoun all saw time in the nonleague win.

The teams combined for four errors in the game, but the Miners had a few defensive highlights. Mat-Su turned a pair of double plays in the win, and outfielder Ian Miller made a highlight-reel-worthy catch against the right field wall.

Gordon also praised the work of catcher P.J. Torres behind the plate.

“You can make a case for P.J. as player of the game,” Gordon said. “The amount of balls he kept out of the backstop, he may have saved three, four runs.”

Mat-Su hits the road for the first time tonight, making the short trip to Anchorage to play the Glacier Pilots at Mulcahy Stadium. The first pitch is scheduled for 7 p.m. The Miners return home to host the Pilots on Wednesday at 7 at Hermon Brothers.

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com and follow him at twitter.com/matsu_sports.