Miners use 20-run night to clinch playoff berth

PALMER — The Anchorage Bucs must have thought their five-run fourth was a big inning.

But the Mat-Su Miners showed the Bucs differently.

Mat-Su used a seven-run eighth to complete a 20-5 shellacking of the Bucs Tuesday night at Hermon Brothers Field in Palmer. The win, which featured 24 hits and seven for extra bases, clinched a playoff berth for the Miners, and pushed Mat-Su to a league-leading 22-14 in Alaska Baseball League play, two games ahead of the Peninsula Oilers (19-15).

All 11 Mat-Su players who had at least one at-bat in the win finished with a hit.

“Our hitters and our job on offense is to get the next man up,” Miners head coach Ben Taylor said in a press release issued by the team. “These guys have bought into that approach, and its 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.

Mat-Su continues a stretch of seven home games in six days Wednesday, hosting the Bucs at 6 p.m. at Hermon Brothers.