Numbers don’t lie

PALMER — Strategy is an important part of baseball, but sometimes you simply can’t ignore the numbers.

With the score tied and a pair of runners in scoring position in the bottom of the sixth inning, the Anchorage Glacier Pilots intentionally walked Mat-Su’s Casey Coyle to set up the potential double play. But the following hitter, Stephen Branca, made the Pilots pay. Branca lifted a sacrifice fly to deep center field and pushed the go-ahead run across the plate to help give the Miners a 6-5 win over the Pilots at Hermon Brothers Field Friday night.

“I live for those situations,” Branca said after the win. “Bases loaded with less than two outs, the game on the line. You dream of those situations.”

There was one out and Anchorage gave Coyle the free pass to first in hopes of getting an inning-ending double play. But the move brought Branca, Mat-Su’s top hitter to the plate.

Branca entered the game leading the Miners with a .370 batting average, 17 hits, five doubles and five RBI.

Branca didn’t get a hit in this at bat, but he did what it took to give the Miners the lead, knocking a two-strike pitch deep into left field.

“With two strikes, he got the job done,” Mat-Su head coach Brian Yocke said of Branca. “They hung it a little bit, and he did just enough.”

Kevin Lum scored on the sacrifice fly to give the Miners the 6-5 lead. For a moment the ball looked like it might have enough to leave Hermon Brothers.

“I knew I got the barrel on it, but knew I didn’t get all of it,” Branca said.

Branca led the Miners with two hits and drove in three runs to help Mat-Su rally from a 4-0 deficit and score its sixth Alaska Baseball League win of the year.

“We never give up,” Branca said. “The game’s never over until the last out is made.”

Anchorage scored a run in the second and three more in the third to take a 4-0 lead. Mat-Su’s slow start was also compounded by an ugly collision at first base that sent Mat-Su infielder Tim Zier to Mat-Su Regional Medical Center.

Zier, a 5-foot-9 San Diego State freshman, collided with Anchorage’s 6-5 first baseman Cael Brockmeyer as he was trying to leg a play out to first.

The impact of the hit knocked Zier out.

“He was out cold,” Yocke said of Zier, who was released later in the evening.

Mat-Su answered Anchorage’s three-run third with three of its own in the bottom of the inning. Ryan Ford led off the inning with a single and Dominick Francia used a bunt single to put two men on.

Coyle followed with a double that drove in Ford and put the Miners on the scoreboard. Branca followed with a two-run single that cut Anchorage’s lead to 4-3.

After Anchorage scored a run in the fifth to take the 5-3 lead, the Miners used a pair of runs to tie the score in the bottom of the inning. Cam Kneeland doubled to center to drive in Branca. Jaycob Brugman’s RBI sacrifice fly tied the score at 6.

Matt Applegate, who recently returned for his second summer with the Miners, pitched 1 2/3 innings of relief to earn the win. Applegate’s biggest pitch of the night came in the sixth, when he came in relief and needed only one pitch to force Anchorage’s Clayton Eslick to ground into an inning-ending double play with the bases loaded.

“It’s just a matter of competing for each other and getting each other out of jams,” Yocke said.

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