Solid pitching and 'Family Feud' fuel Mat-Su Miners this season

A franchise all too familiar with second place is trying to change the pattern in 2016.

The Mat-Su Miners of the Alaska Baseball League finished second in the ABL playoffs each of the last three seasons and haven't won a league title since 2010.

But, earlier this week they were the first ABL team to clinch a playoff berth, and last week were the first team to reach 20 wins.

"It goes to playing as a unit," said Miners third baseman A.J. Lee. "We're all playing for each other. We're not too worried about individual stuff right now — just worried about getting wins, (going) to the playoffs and doing well there."

The Miners (25-17, 23-16 ABL) clinched a playoff spot Tuesday with a 20-5 win over the Anchorage Bucs.

The team from Palmer owes much of its success to a superb pitching staff, which threw a combined no-hitter in a 8-4 Friday win over the Anchorage Glacier Pilots.

Mat-Su's Justin Vernia leads the league with a mind-boggling 0.69 ERA in 39.1 innings. The next best is Weston Rivers of the Anchorage Glacier Pilots at 1.25.

Miners teammate Jacob Hughey and his 47 strikeouts are tied for No. 2 in the ABL, and Vernia and Connor Higgins are both in the top five in the league in wins with four apiece.

"I think we have the best pitching staff in the league," Lee said. "Our guys go out there night in and night out and give us great starts and great relief appearances … our pitching staff gives us a chance to win every night."

Mat-Su is led by coach Ben Taylor, who coincidentally became the Miners' winningest coach when they earned their 20th win of the season July 18 against the Chugiak Chinooks. He owns a 108-59 record with Mat-Su.

The milestone was one of many for Taylor's career. He surpassed 200 career wins last season.

Before his four summers with the Miners, Taylor left the East Texas Pump Jacks as the winningest coach in the Texas Collegiate League, where he also coached for four seasons.

"After this year, I will have spent a year of my life in Alaska and it's a life-changing place and I love it here," Taylor said. "(I've) made lifelong friends and become family with a lot of people here, so, this is a very special thing for a lot of reasons."

The family atmosphere Taylor mentioned is something general manager Pete Christopher and his wife, Denise, try to instill in the team. The Miners regularly have dinners at the Christopher household.

"(Denise) cooks for the team, so I could have like 20 guys over at the house eating," Christopher said. "We feel it's important that guys hang out with each other and get to know each other."

Family also has second meaning for the Miners, as in "Family Feud."

The iconic game show that's been around for four decades can be heard blaring from the Miners clubhouse before every game.

"One day we just turned on the TV and it was playing and we all got into it," shortstop Josh Bissonette said. "It started becoming like a competition — who was better at 'Family Feud,' the pitchers or the position players?

"We think it's great. We get a lot of laughs out of it and just good camaraderie."

The 'Feud'-fueled Miners have been hot in the latter half of the season, but anything can happen in the always-changing landscape of the ABL, especially this season, when four out of five teams make the playoffs instead of the usual two division leaders.

The ABL changed formats for 2016 after the Fairbanks Goldpanners chose to leave the league, dropping it from six to five teams and eliminating the American and National divisions.

Last season, the Miners finished with a 31-10 record — nine more wins than the next-best team — but lost to the Bucs in the ensuing best-of-3 Top of the World Series.

This season, the Miners sit with a 2.5 game lead over the Pilots and Peninsula Oilers with five games remaining on the slate, but Taylor said his squad isn't focused on the standings.

"Baseball is a day-in and day-out thing," he said. "If you're watching the standings, you're not paying attention to really what's in front of you.

"These things are tough, so it's about winning the next game and winning the next inning and winning the next pitch for us."

The ABL season wraps Wednesday before jumping right into the playoffs Thursday.