The Peninsula Oilers swept a doubleheader from the Anchorage Glacier Pilots on Monday in Alaska Baseball League play at Mulcahy Stadium in Anchorage.
Peninsula won 2-0 and 4-3 in eight innings as the Oilers have now won seven of nine games after starting the league schedule 6-16.
Rain played havoc with the Oilers schedule all weekend. Friday, the Oilers lost to the Mat-Su Miners 6-0 in a game shortened by rain.
A Saturday game against the Miners and a Sunday game against the Chugiak-Eagle River Chinooks were then both rained out. The Miners game has been rescheduled for a 4 p.m. doubleheader at Hermon Brothers Field in Palmer at 4 p.m. on July 29.
The Oilers were originally supposed to play the Pilots in single games on Monday and Tuesday, but the Monday doubleheader was scheduled with rain expected Tuesday.
The Oilers will begin their final homestand of the regular season Thursday at 6 p.m. against the Anchorage Bucs at Coral Seymour Memorial Park in Kenai.
The Pilots came into the twin bill 7-1 against the Oilers, but Peninsula won both games to move to 13-18 in the league. The Pilots fell to 20-8.
The Miners defeated the Chinooks 9-4 on Monday to move to 23-10 and take over first place from the Pilots by a half game.
The Bucs are in third at 15-14, three games in front of the Oilers. The Chinooks are in fifth at 5-26, meaning just one more Chugiak loss or Oilers win will clinch the fourth and final ABL playoff spot for the Oilers.
In the 2-0 game, Nick Welch and Drake Frize combined to shut out the Pilots. Frize went five innings and gave up four hits, while Frize worked a hitless two innings.
In the second, Dalton Bowling started the inning with a triple and scored on a ground-out by Noah Hennings. In the sixth, Trey Becker started the inning with a walk and scored on a sac fly by James Shimashita.
In the 4-3 game, the Oilers went up 3-1 in the third, but the Pilots came back to tie it in the fifth. Carson Seeman pitched the first four innings for the Oilers, giving up a run on three hits, while Mason Kokodynski pitched the next two, giving up two runs on four hits.
Doubleheaders are scheduled for seven innings. In ABL extra innings, each inning starts with a runner on second. Ethan Firestone had a clutch, two-out single to score Casey Burnham in the eighth and put the Oilers up 4-3. That was the 12th hit of the game for the Oilers.
Shimashita kept the Pilots off the board in the seventh and eighth for the victory. The big play in the eighth was the Oilers getting the second out of the inning at the plate on a play that involved three different rundowns.
