2008 Pennant Race
The Alaskan League was quickly becoming known for wild and woolly offensive outbursts, often fueled by crucial fielding errors.
Take the Juneau Senators' July 13th game against the visiting Bethel Mushers. In a lopsided third inning, the Senators scored twelve runs. It started innocently enough with a walk, single, RBI single, and three-run homer. Four runs in with nobody out - bad but not unusual. Musher starter Dylan Savard stayed in the game and got the next two outs.
Then came the eight-run two-out explosion. It started with a throwing error on the third baseman that put a runner on second. It was followed up with a run-scoring double, which knocked Savard out, a walk, three consecutive line-drive singles, and then back-to-back homers. Allard came in to pitch and gave up a single but retired the next batter. Nine consecutive batters had reached base, and 16 Senators hit in the inning. They went on to win
21-4, with Brent Crowe (2 homers, 6 RBI) getting Player of the Game.
The Mushers were the goat in an even wilder game on July 23rd. Playing the Jets at home, Bethel gave up the first run of the game, but then chased Eagle River-Chugiak starter Jeremie Dessureault with a ten-spot in the bottom of the 1st! Bethel extended the lead to 11-1 in the third. Then in the fifth, the Jets got four of the runs back, one on a Ray Tomiak double and three on a Bill Duval home run.
The score was 12-5 in the eighth, and Bethel brought in mopup reliever Mark Myers, who had allowed six of the Senators' runs in their 12-run inning on July 13. He was again ineffective, yielding a Bill Duval solo shot and then allowing two more runs on a two-out single before Rick Calder came in. Calder promptly gave up a walk and a single, making it 12-9. He was pulled for Randy Wright, a recent acquisition from Fairbanks. He got the dangerous Ray Tomiak on strikes.
The Mushers added an insurance run in the bottom half to make it 13-9. Rather than bringing in the closer, Bethel decided to leave Wright in there for the 9th. He gave up a single and a double and then, in a controversial decision, intentionally walked the bases loaded to put the double play in order. He gave up two singles. That made it 13-11. He should have been long gone by now, but for some reason he stayed in there. He did get weak hitter Tim Nakamura on strikes, but then Al Noguchi got an infield single to make it 13-12, and the bases were still loaded with one out. Finally Jack Woodside came in - he was the closer, but was not exactly having an effective year. He threw a wild pitch on his first pitch in the game to tie it up. Then a sac fly gave the Jets the lead.
Bethel failed to score in the bottom of the 9th, and so the Jets had come back from a ten-run deficit to win the game, 14-13. Shockingly, there had been no errors in the game!
Bethel's year-end pitching stats:
Code:
Name W L SV ERA G GS IP HA R ER HR BB K BABIP
Charlie Newson MR 0 0 0 0.00 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 3 0.000
Ron Trainor MR 3 1 0 3.26 41 0 61 65 30 22 6 23 31 0.291
Davis Crawford SP 7 9 0 4.19 24 24 155 174 87 72 15 46 40 0.284
Ryan Dye SP 4 9 0 4.33 19 19 106 117 64 51 10 31 61 0.302
Dylan Savard SP 5 5 0 4.35 20 20 110 103 66 53 12 39 54 0.264
Bill Hearn MR 2 1 1 4.46 34 0 38 40 23 19 6 16 46 0.340
Pete Strelioff SP 10 8 0 4.50 24 24 140 152 82 70 16 43 93 0.305
Arvin Currell MR 0 0 0 5.40 2 1 5 7 3 3 0 4 3 0.412
Jack Woodside CL 3 10 17 5.86 36 0 35 51 34 23 6 19 16 0.344
Cecil MacDougall MR 2 1 0 6.20 15 0 20 26 14 14 3 9 15 0.354
Darby Daoust MR 1 0 2 6.70 30 0 42 48 31 31 10 18 18 0.277
Mark Myers MR 2 5 1 7.20 29 0 30 50 38 24 11 15 12 0.342
Eddy Allard MR 0 4 0 7.53 32 8 57 91 53 48 8 28 17 0.355
Rick Calder MR 0 1 0 9.00 15 0 17 23 21 17 1 15 14 0.423
Randy Wright MR 1 1 0 10.00 23 0 27 40 35 30 5 16 19 0.365
Harry Dand MR 1 0 0 12.15 6 0 7 11 9 9 1 1 2 0.400
Yowza! Not exactly a reliable bullpen there.
On July 1, the Mat-Su Miners were in third place in the Seward Division, behind the Bucs and Grizzlies and just a half-game ahead of the Oilers. But in July, they would go on a tear, winning 32 of their next 46 games and steaming far ahead of the other contenders to clinch the division. Even after losing their last five games of the regular season to finish 56-40, they were four games ahead of the second-place Anchorage Bucs.
The Denali Division, on the other hand, was a war down to the very end - between North Pole and Juneau, with everyone else lagging well behind. In an exciting finish to the season, the Nicks and Senators played a three-game set in North Pole, with the Nicks three games up. Juneau would have to sweep the series to force a one-game playoff.
The first game was a tight 3-2 affair until Juneau broke it open in the eighth by hanging a five-spot on Nick starter Tom Pick, pushing his year-end ERA up to 5.05. They won it 8-3.
The next day, Sunday August 24, the Nicks clinched it in decisive fashion, defeating Juneau 15-1 and hanging
ten runs on Rookie of the Year candidate Don Taggart. Juneau came back and won the next game, but it was meaningless. North Pole and Mat-Su would face each other in the AKLCS, just as most pundits had predicted.
Year-end standings:
Code:
Seward Division
Team W L PCT GB Pyt.Rec
Mat-Su Miners 56 40 0.583 - 54-42
Anchorage (ANC) Bucs 52 44 0.542 4 49-47
Peninsula Oilers 51 45 0.531 5 55-41
Kodiak Grizzlies 48 48 0.500 8 50-46
Anchorage (AGP) Glacier Pilots 46 50 0.479 10 45-51
Eagle River-Chugiak Jets 40 56 0.417 16 35-61
Denali Division
Team W L PCT GB Pyt.Rec
North Pole Nicks 56 40 0.583 - 56-40
Juneau Senators 54 42 0.563 2 56-40
Fairbanks Goldpanners 49 47 0.510 7 50-46
Ketchikan King Salmon 43 53 0.448 13 45-51
Bethel Mushers 41 55 0.427 15 40-56
Sitka Sentinels 40 56 0.417 16 41-55