Sports

Pitchers propelling teams early in Alaska Baseball League season

Pitchers are bringing the heat to start the Alaska Baseball League season.

Within the first four games of the season there were three shutouts and Sunday, Mat-Su Miners left-handed pitcher Jacob Hughey chalked up 11 strikeouts in five innings — and he doesn't even lead the league.

That honor goes to Peninsula Oilers' Dom Bazzani, who has 16 Ks in 10 innings through Monday's games.

In Hughey's debut for the Miners, a 7-1 victory over the Chugiak Chinooks, the lefthander from Long Beach State allowed five hits and one earned run.

"The pitching staff has been fantastic," Miners coach Ben Taylor said in a press release. "They've attacked the zone well and thrown a ton of strikes. The guys compete real hard."

Solid play on the mound has resulted in seven ABL games where the losing team couldn't muster more than one run through the league's first five days.

Hunter Davis, a Glacier Pilots pitcher who arrived in Anchorage over the weekend, recorded eight strikeouts in eight innings to move into fourth among the league strikeout leaders. He said batters are still getting settled in and used to using wood bats.

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"Guys have probably had a couple weeks off from seeing live pitching and just trying to find the barrel on a wood bat might be a little different," Davis said. "So it takes a couple games for them to adjust to that."

But despite the solid play from the mound, several batters have already found their stride.

Anchorage Bucs' Alan Trejo leads the league in hitting with a .471 batting average through five games. He has eight hits and five runs scored.

His teammate, McCarthy Tatum, isn't far behind him with a .429 average. They are the only two eligible hitters batting over .400.

More than a third of the league's hitters are batting under .200, but many players have just arrived in Alaska and many teams are still missing a handful of players.

Bucs pitching coach Matt Florer said as hitters, pitchers and coaches continue to settle in, teams will start pulling away in the standings in the coming weeks.

"Most teams are still filling in — there's still two, three, four players missing still from each team," Florer said. "It's going to be a scramble for who's going to be on top (of the standings) and who's going to be on the bottom, but it will probably be taking place in these next 10 days, 14 days, where we'll start kind of getting some separation and seeing who's playing the best baseball."

Stephan Wiebe

Stephan Wiebe writes about all things Alaska sports.

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