Miners’ Hot Streak Reaches a Fever Pitch in Rout of Glacier Pilots

As the calendar turned from June to July, the Mat-Su Miners were sitting on a precipice. The team had endured a miserable 1-4 Kenai trip, a home blowout loss to the Bucs, and a couple backbreaking finishes to fall to 5-8, before a couple wins got them back to .500. With the Pilots, a team Mat-Su was 2-1 against coming into Monday night, coming to town, the Alaska Baseball League world waited on to see if the team truly had recovered its early-season form, or if Sunday's 12-0 clobbering of last-place Chugiak-Eagle River was just a flash in the pan.

The Miners answered.

Mat-Su followed up a 12-0 win with a 10-0 finish that somehow felt even more dominant than Sunday. While it might not have matched the last game in terms of raw points on the scoreboard, the level to which the Miners utterly dismantled the Glacier Pilots rivaled any performance the ABL has seen this year, and firmly cemented Mat-Su as the hottest team in the great white north.

For the third straight game, the Miners jumped out to a lead quickly. Christian Perez, on second after a single and a passed ball, got a ride home on a Nick Bisaccia single. The game truly got blown open, however, two innings later. A perfect storm of passed balls, wild pitches, errors, and one clutch Chase Wilcox double plated five runs – all but one unearned – to knock David Heefner (0-2) out of the game, and the game out of reach of Anchorage.

Once again, as impressive as the 10 on the scoreboard is, the 0 is the far more impressive digit. Rocco Bernadina (2-0) pitched a gem, striking out ten and surrendering just four baserunners, and only one hit. As a team, through the eight innings in which they got to bat, the Glacier Pilots went 1-25 with a pair of walks and a hit-by-pitch. After Bernadina completed his six nearly flawless innings, Eduardo Mendoza managed a 1-2-3 frame and childhood Miners fan and Wasilla native Nolan Murphy made his home debut to a loud reception from the Mat-Su Valley fans.

And on top of all of that, those fans were in for one more euphoric moment in the bottom half of the eighth. With the Miners having scored on a Kyle McCausland sac fly two frames earlier, the stage was set for perhaps the happiest ending to a game that Mat-Su could have asked for. Pilots reliever Colton Haase (another Wasilla native) walked two of the first three batters he faced in the frame, which brought McCausland to the plate one final time.

After the Massachusetts native jacked a first-pitch fastball over the left field fence, the run rule kicked in to immediately end the game. Walking a game off 10-0 sounds like something only possible in some gimmick league that gives you ten runs if you hit a ball through a tire mounted on the outfield fence, but this was no farce. As the Palmer crowd roared and the Miners dugout swarmed McCausland and showered him with Gatorade bottles, you could almost feel the power balance in the ABL start to shift.

After a finish like that, every Miners fan is raring to watch more action, and they won't have to wait long. Mat-Su returns to Chugiak Tuesday at 6 PM AKDT to challenge the Chinooks once more.

To follow along with the Miners' rampage, head down to Lee Jordan Field in Chugiak, or tune in on the Mat-Su Miners YouTube channel!

Charlie Fellows, 2024 Broadcaster
Mat-Su Miners