Oilers complete 7-3 homestand with wild victory over Bucs

The Peninsula Oilers completed a 7-3 homestand by defeating the Anchorage Bucs 9-8 on Saturday in a wild Alaska Baseball League game at Coral Seymour Memorial Park in Kenai.

The Bucs struck for six runs in the second inning before the Oilers scored six in the fourth, two in the fifth and one in the sixth.

Eventual winning pitcher Mose Hayes, a product of Homer High School, retired the first two batters in the ninth before a single, Cade Lacy home run, single and walk suddenly had the tying run on second.

Josh Hankins hit a hard grounder to left field, but Elijah Vogelsong-Lewis charged and threw a one-hop strike to catcher Brock Wirthgen to get Christian Powell at the plate by a good four steps.

“This team is a lot different from most teams in the summer,” said Vogelsong-Lewis, who also was 2 for 4 with two RBIs. “It’s the summer and you’re here to get better for individual reasons.

“This team, they really want to win. And I think that’s a difference with a lot of other summer ball teams — we don’t like to lose. When you don’t like to lose, you fight a little harder.”

Eddie Leon, who had a two-run home run in the fifth, said it felt good to beat the Bucs. Leon said the Bucs talked a lot during the series and were throwing over to first Saturday too much for his liking.

“It’s summer ball,” Leon said. “I don’t know how serious they take this, but obviously the team that’s having just fun out there is taking everybody’s lunch money.”

The Oilers won three games in the five-game series, but the Bucs still lead the league at 11-5. The Oilers are 8-6, while the Mat-Su Miners are 7-8, the Anchorage Glacier Pilots are 8-11 and the Chugiak-Eagle River Chinooks are 5-9.

In the second inning, the Oilers committed an error on a sac bunt, and failed to get an out at home on a ground ball with the bases loaded.

A team like the Bucs will take advantage of that. Cole Carlon, who was 3 for 4, had a two-RBI single, as did Tommy Eisenstat, who was 2 for 3.

“We didn’t let that snowball into the next inning,” Vogelsong-Lewis said. “We kind of just let it go and kept competing.”

Oilers starter Aaron Morris gave up six runs on seven hits, but he also pitched a scoreless third and fourth to give the Oilers time to turn the tide.

Oilers head coach Larry McCann said the Oilers had opportunities in the early innings but did not capitalize.

“If you just stay with the plan and keep battling, you see what happens,” McCann said.

In the fourth, Miners starter Chad Gurnea hit the first two batters of the inning before departing.

The Oilers pounced on reliever Jeremiah Arnett. Arnett recorded two outs and didn’t make it out of the inning, yielding four runs on five hits.

Zakary Farris had a double that cleared the bases. Colin Robson, who was 2 for 4, had a two-RBI double. Max Roffwarg, who was 3 for 4 and scored twice, had an RBI single, as did Vogelsong-Lewis.

Bucs head coach Bill Springman said both his squad and the Oilers will make the opposition pay for free bases.

“This is the kind of team where you’ve got to make them earn their way on,” Springman said. “If you don’t make them earn their way on, they’re going to find ways to come back and beat you, because they have good pitching, they have a good coaching staff and they have a good team.”

Free bases continued to haunt the Bucs. In the fifth, Wirthgen reached on an error and Leon crushed a two-run homer off side-armer Rylan Haider that bounced off the top of the left-field wall.

Leon said the first pitch said Haider’s delivery was funky, with the offering starting behind Leon’s head and ending up over the plate.

“I believe it was a heater,” Leon said, when asked which pitch he hit out. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it was, but I got my pitch. I just kind of put bat on ball, and there it went.”

In the sixth, Roffwarg reached on a play that wasn’t ruled an error, but was a makeable play to the shortstop. Again, the Oilers made the Bucs pay when Vogelsong-Lewis drove in Roffwarg.

The Oilers had runners on second and third with no outs in the sixth, but Brody Purcell came on and got out of the scrape without a run, then threw two more scoreless innings to keep the Bucs close.

Hayes, with help from dazzling plays at short by Petey Soto and center field by Robson, put up four scoreless innings despite getting hit in the hip area by a come-backer in the seventh.

Then came the rally in the ninth, with Lacy matching Leon by bouncing a homer off the top of the left-field wall.

“I think Mose just kind of ran out of gas a little bit,” McCann said.

Springman had no problem with his third-base coach sending Powell on the decisive play.

“I told my coach, ‘Great job,’” he said. “You have to send him there. They did a good job of playing him in and he made a great throw.

“It was a great one to win and a tough one to lose.”

The Oilers face the Bucs four more times in the regular season — all on the road. Peninsula plays the Bucs on Monday at 6 p.m. at Mulcahy Stadium in the first game of an eight-game road trip.