Miners to host Oilers in ABL Top of the World Series

PALMER — Mother Nature must be a Miners fan.

Thanks to a 4-1 postseason victory over the Anchorage Bucs Thursday night and a soggy Hermon Brothers Field on Friday, the Mat-Su Miners advanced to the Alaska Baseball League Top of the World Series.

Mat-Su is now one of two ABL teams to emerge from a rain-shortened first-round that will play for a league title. The Miners host the Peninsula Oilers Saturday at 6 p.m. in the first contest of a best-of-3 championship series, scheduled to continue Sunday.

During the offseason, ABL adopted a four-team playoffs, with a pair of best-of-3 series, to decide the league championship. But poor weather in Southcentral Alaska and the Kenai Peninsula this week, and a condensed schedule which features a pair of best-of-3 series in only four days, forced ABL officials to make difficult decisions. The first came after second-seeded Peninsula watched Game 1 of its first-round series against the Anchorage Glacier Pilots get rained out. With limited options, ABL officials canned that best-of-3 series, and scheduled a single game Friday, with the winner advancing to the championship.

On the other side of the bracket, top-seed Mat-Su hosted the Anchorage Bucs in a series-opener Thursday. Rain began to sprinkle early, but poured before Mat-Su managed the 4-1 win over the Bucs. Heavy rains continued overnight, and league officials were forced to cancel Friday’s action due to conditions deemed, “unplayable.”

Like the Oilers-Pilots series, the Miners-Bucs first-round series was decided in just a single game.

Strong start, long balls lead Miners

PALMER — In their regular season finale Wednesday night, the Mat-Su Miners took Hermon Brothers Field as temperatures hovered in the 70s.

As Mat-Su opened postseason play less than 24 hours later, it was a far different scene at the Palmer ballpark. The temperature dipped into the low 50s, and rain turned from a trickle to a pour.

But the Miners didn’t let a little wet weather slow them down. Angelo Armenta and Levi Jordan each hit solo home runs, and starting pitcher Connor Higgins worked his way into the seventh inning to help the Miners score a 4-1 win over the Anchorage Bucs during the opening day of the first round of the Alaska Baseball League playoffs.

“It’s been pretty cloudy the last couple weeks. You’ve got to expect anything,” Armenta said after the win.

Armenta used his third-inning blast to help the Miners grab an early lead in the game and the series.

“I got it pretty good. I thought it had a good chance,” Armenta said of the home run, his second in 26 games with the Miners.

Armenta finished with a team-high three hits in the win.

“He’s a veteran guy. It really showed tonight,” Mat-Su head coach Ben Taylor said of Armenta, a University of Southern California product.

The Miners used three straight hits to plate a pair of runs in the fourth. Jordan led off the inning with a single, and Garrison Schwartz and Michael Donadio followed with consecutive doubles. Schwartz drove in Jordan, and Donadio sent Schwartz home.

Jordan added a solo blast in the fifth.

“We came out and swung the bat really well. It was a good day for us,” Taylor said.

Higgins pitched 6 1/3 innings for the Miners, scattering five hits and no earned runs. Of the 97 pitches the 6-foot-5 lefty threw, 64 were for strikes.

“He was fantastic,” Taylor said. “He gave us (6 1/3) really strong innings, competed hard in the zone, made some big pitches for us.”

Mick Vorhof and Jordan Floyd combined for 2 2/3 scoreless innings, with Floyd earning the save.

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