SWEET REPEAT

PALMER — Heading into the final week of the season, the Mat-Su Miners were feeling beaten and bruised.

The Miners suffered through a rough, week-long road trip to Fairbanks, finishing 3-5 during the eight-game stretch in the Interior. Mat-Su dropped from first to third in the Alaska Baseball League standings with those five losses and returned home 2 1/2 games behind the first-place Alaska Goldpanners.

But the Miners didn’t balk.

Mat-Su posted five wins during its final six games of the season and swept a doubleheader against the Goldpanners on Saturday to win its second straight ABL title.

“It takes incredible toughness,” Mat-Su head coach Russell Raley said after the Miners won their fourth title in seven years with a 5-1 win over the Panners. “They played their tails off. They really had to battle.”

Joe Bircher pitched a complete game four-hitter and Quinn Pippin homered and drove in a pair of runs to lead the Miners to the win during the winner-take-all second leg of the doubleheader.

“I told them, ‘It’s your ring to win,’ and they went out and won it,” Raley said.

The Miners, who split a doubleheader with the Panners on Friday, entered action Saturday afternoon a game behind the first-place Panners. Mat-Su opened with a convincing 9-0 win on Saturday afternoon to create a tie at the top of the standings, and clinched the title with their second victory of the day later in the evening.

“We had to win the first for the championship to even be possible,” said first baseman Nick DeBiasse, who finished 3-for-5 with three RBI in Game 1. “That was the big thing, getting that first one under your belt to give yourself a chance.”

Bircher, who allowed only three baserunners through the first six innings and took a shutout into the seventh, said the lopsided win earlier in the day gave the team confidence heading into the season-finale.

“I knew the bats were working well after that first game. That gave me the confidence to go out there and throw strikes and not have a lot of pressure,” said Bircher, who finishes the summer 6-1 with a 1.29 earned run average in 49 innings pitched. “The guys behind me made a lot of good plays, so that helped, and the bats got going too.”

After allowing Evan Simonitsch’s leadoff single in the first, Bircher went into veritable cruise control. The Bradley product retired 15 of the next 16 Panners and took a two-hit shutout into the sixth.

“I thought he was just pounding the strike zone with three pitches,” Raley said.

Mat-Su took the 2-0 lead in the third. DeBiasse stepped to the plate with two men on and watched a pair of runners score without having to swing the bat. Panners starter Drew Firebaugh threw three straight balls to DeBiasse. Bret Schwartz, who doubled early in the inning, scored on a Firebaugh balk. Ruch hustled across home plate on a Goldpanner passed ball.

“We always try to take advantage of every opportunity you have,” DeBiasse said. “Sometimes you’re not going to get a bunch of hits. You try to keep pressure on the other teams, and sometimes they make mistakes.”

Pippin knocked a solo shot over the right field fence in the fifth inning to give him his first home run of the summer and the Miners a 3-0 lead.

“I got an inside fastball and was able to turn on it,” Pippin said.

Raley said he felt that was a key point in the game.

“I thought the home run really separated us a little bit,” Raley said.

Pippin also posted a run-scoring single in the sixth that drove West Thigpen home and gave the Miners the 5-0 advantage.

“Quinn stepped up huge today and really carried us,” Raley said.

Bircher earned the complete game win during the second game, but the pitching was also stellar during Game 1. Matt Applegate allowed only four hits through six scoreless innings, and Jason Trivett pitched a scoreless seventh.

“Today, the pitching was incredible,” Raley said.

Entering the final homestand of the season, a stretch that included six games against the league’s top two teams, the Miners were sitting in third place, 2 1/2 games back. Mat-Su blanked the second-place Peninsula Oilers 2-0 to start the stretch and used a Pablo Bermudez’s walk-off single the edge the Oilers the following night.

On Friday, the Miners split the doubleheader with the Panners to stay alive in the hunt for the league title. Mat-Su needed the sweep on Friday, but was able to win it all.

“We’ve just been able to grind it out all year,” Bircher said. “We’ve got a lot of guys who can do a lot of different things. We haven’t been depending on the same guys day-in and day-out.”

The Miners posted five walk-off wins, three more in extra innings and were 9-2 in one-run games.

“If that doesn’t mean toughness, I don’t know what does,” Raley said. “They came to the field every day and gave it their best effort. It was special to watch.”

Contact Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com.