Alaska Baseball

Anchorage Bucs topple Pilots to capture Alaska Baseball League championship

The Anchorage Bucs are back on top of the world.

The Bucs capped a 33-win season Tuesday night by storming past the Anchorage Glacier Pilots 7-1 in the third game of the best-of-3 Top of the World Series at sunny Mulcahy Stadium.

The championship is the ninth, and the first since 2015, for the Bucs. In the previous two seasons, they made it to the championship series but both times finished second to the Mat-Su Miners.

This year, the Pilots disposed of the Miners and the Bucs got past the Peninsula Oilers in the tournament’s semifinal series. That set up an all-Anchorage finale.

The Bucs (33-16), who also won the regular-season championship, held off the Pilots (29-20) in the first game, 6-5 on Sunday. The Pilots roared back with an 8-1 win Monday, setting up Tuesday’s winner-take-all game.

The Bucs grabbed control behind an early scoring surge — two runs in each of the first three innings — and five scoreless innings from Evan Taylor, who chalked up his first win of the season. Taylor, a left-hander from the University of Arkansas, limited the Pilots to a single hit while striking out three and walking one.

The Bucs took advantage of shaky pitching from starter Cody Curfman, the first of five Pilot pitchers. They scored a run on a pair of wild pitches in the first inning and loaded the bases in the second inning with two walks and a single.

The game’s big hit came in the third inning from Justin Cook, a third baseman from the University of Richmond, whose two-run blast gave the Bucs a 6-0 lead. The Pilots scored their run the seventh, and the Bucs tacked on an extra run in the eighth.

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