Dieterich, Miners get revenge in 13-inning no-hitter

Miners LHP Blake Dieterich held the Oilers
hitless through nine innings.

The Mat-Su Miners, fresh off a no-hitter loss to Eddie Orozco and the Oilers, showed last night that they weren't quite ready to give up first place in the ABL. What did they do? Put up a no-hitter of their own in a game that proved to be about as perfect a definition of the phrase "pitching duel" as any I've ever heard of.

Blake Dieterich got the start on the mound for the Miners and threw nine stellar innings of baseball, giving up no runs on no hits and walking just two. Dieterich also struck out three over the nine complete frames. At the end of regulation play, however, the scoreboard was still reading all goose-eggs. This game would go into extra innings and Dieterich would not get the official complete game.

The pitchers for the opposing Oilers were throwing beautiful baseball as well. Kellen Moen went five strong innings, surrendering three hits and two walks while striking out five. Taylor Garrison carried the shutout through the eighth with three innings, two hits, no walks, and sitting down a pair. Jorge Marban came in to close out the ninth with a perfect frame, and went on to total 3.2 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, and 3K. In extra frames, Adam Heredia threw a hit-less 1/3 inning, walking one as well.

It was big man Kolby Moore of the Oilers who stumbled in the top of the 13th to break the logjam, though he had plenty of help from the Oilers defense in giving the game away. Miner Brett Schwartz doubled and scored the go-ahead run on an error; Matt Ozanne and Nick DeBiasse would cross the plate on some manufactured insurance runs thanks to another error and an RBI by Pablo Bermudez.

Random player notes from the past few days

The Goldpanners' DJ Crumlich, out of UC
Irvine, made some heads-up team plays.

I'm taking a little bit of time away from the ballpark, what with the Anchorage area being nearly deserted all weekend and for the next couple days, but I've been listening to the audio feeds and watching me some PannerVision when I can. Most of it has come in bits and pieces, though, so I haven't really had enough good stuff to put together a whole reflections post on an entire game. So instead of struggling through that, here's some quick notes about what I've managed to catch from the games, Saturday through Monday...

DJ Crumlich looked pretty good for the Goldpanners. He displayed some good heads-up base running early on, faking the steal home to distract the pitcher while Sikorski swiped second. He also made a pretty solid leaping catch. Tack on a hit and a run and he had himself a pretty good game.

I think Liam Baron (Panners) is a pretty cool cat. In fact, I think I've called him that before. Something about his demeanor says "cool cat" to me, I guess. Anyway, he's got a unique style, throwing lots of curveballs. My first thought was, "how many curves is this guy going to throw?" But there's some subtle differences in his, though, as he throws variations of his breaking ball from different arm slots to keep the batter off guard, mixing fastballs in for good measure. Three strikeouts on 2.1 IP and no earned runs on the evening to pick up the win last night. Whatever he's doing, he's doing it pretty well. I'm curious as to whether that's a strategy that a player can take very far into the pro ranks, but until someone proves him wrong, what the heck.

We already learned about Eddie Orozco (Oilers) and his no-hitter, but getting down to some of the nuts and bolts, he's pretty effective with mixing his pitches. He's got a good feel for his curveball and last night he was using it effectively, combined with his fastball, to get ahead in the count. It seemed like his strategy was to get way ahead of the hitter and then try and get him to chase junk, and it worked pretty well, obviously.

Reflections: Oilers @ Pilots, 6/10/2010

This is going to be a quick one today; I am packing up to get on the airplane and get to ALASKA! I've got the league schedule up and I'm planning out my first three games so I can see some matches in person and give you real reflections, plus some photos. But I just caught the first half of the audio of this game, so I only have half as many impressions to offer.

For this game, although my impressions were based on the audio, I had the opportunity to confirm my thoughts with some people who were actually there, including Joel London who hooked me up via Twitter: "[Pilots starter Joe] Sawicki was hitting his spots all night, but got hit hard in the 1st and got kinda wild in the 5th" and "[Oilers SP Kolby] Moore was all over the place Thurs but was helped by the Pilots inability to get timely hits. Had 1-hitter thru 4" This is basically the assessment I got out of it.


Joe Sawicki sounded like he was really working the corners and getting most of the calls all night -- despite the protest of some batters. This is the second time we've had a look at Sawicki and so far he seems really good. I think it took him through the first to get settled in, though, and by that time the Oilers' potent offense had seized the opportunity to do some damage. Ryan Gebhart really showed an aggressive streak for the Oilers, lining the first pitch off the game by Sawicki and then swiping second base. He did well in the leadoff spot tonight to get things going and he could be a real spark plug for the Oilers this year. He's got a lot of fans down in Oilerland and I have to say that I'm starting to come around on him.