In 2012, the Alaska Baseball League was well represented in the first round of the MLB amateur draft. If MLB.com’s top 100 draft prospect ranking is any indication, we could likely see a pair of former Anchorage players added to the list of first-round picks with ABL experience. Ranked #13 on the list is 2011/2012 [...]

Robert Barr, a filmmaker who “grew up at Mulcahy Stadium”, has decided to chase his dream of telling the story of the Anchorage Glacier Pilots on screens big and small. And he’d like you to be a part of his project. In 2001, Barr followed the Pilots on what would become their most recent National [...]

The Kansas City Royals are taking a shot on former first supplemental round draft pick and 2005 Anchorage Glacier Pilot Mitch Canham. Canham was regarded highly enough to be selected 57th overall in the 2007 draft after back-to-back NCAA championships as catcher with Oregon State and, of course, a 2005 summer in the Alaska Baseball [...]

Swick, the infielder out of Southern California, is a guy I really like. He’s a junior headed into the 2013 MLB Draft and I am very confident he’ll get drafted. He had four tools that I thought were above the curve. He made solid contact for average, showed some pop in his bat, and he could run and throw well. Perfect Game ranked him #17 on their 2012 Alaska top prospects list and for good reason.

The Arizona Diamondbacks said hello to one former Anchorage player and goodbye to another earlier this month. The club signed former Bucs backstop Tuffy Gosewisch and lost left-handed pitcher Mike Zagurski — once a Glacier Pilot — to free agency. Gosewisch spent the bulk of his pro career, up until 2012, in the Phillies’ farm [...]

Bryan Harris will have some big expectations to live up to as skipper of the 2013 Goldpanners, who are saying goodbye to Jim Dietz after sixteen seasons at the helm. According to the press release on Goldpanners.com, Dietz retired at the end of the 2012 season with 585 career wins to his credit. Although best [...]

As I write this, the 2012 MLB playoffs are moments away from opening, with Atlanta hosting St. Louis for the National League Wildcard one-game playoff match-up. With no margin for error Kris Medlen — the former Goldpanner who has become Atlanta’s unexpected ace in the second half of the season — will get the ball [...]

The September MLB call-ups have reached a pair of former Anchorage Glacier Pilots: Dane De la Rosa (2002) and Chase D’arnaud (2006). Both players have MLB experience, having been called up in 2011. 29-year-old De la Rosa was originally drafted by the Yankees, in the 24th round in 2002 out of Riverside Community College, and [...]

It’s kind of a weird feeling, not having a bunch of unwritten game-notes looming over my head, so I’ve got to address the elephant in the room and update the Pro Alumni Database while there’s still some pro ball to be played. This is one of those bigger projects that become very time consuming, so [...]

While most of the baseball prospect blogs churn out their Top Prospect rankings in the spring, I am bucking the trend and doing it in the fall. Why? Pretty simple: I spend most of my spring and summer preparing for and covering the ABL season and this stuff simply falls to the wayside. But that’s [...]

For the first time in who knows how long, the National Baseball Congress World Series has come to its conclusion, and the Alaska Baseball League was not represented. The Santa Barbara Foresters — who defeated the Oilers in the championship round of the 2011 series — took their second consecutive NBCWS championship. The ABL teams [...]

With the 2012 Alaska League season in the rear view mirror, and the MLB playoff races building momentum, I’m doing some catching up on the professional players with ABL stints in their backgrounds. In order to do that, I have to update my list of who the guys are who are still out there in [...]

It was a beautiful afternoon in Chugiak: sun, 70 degrees and a ball game in which the home town Chinooks hosted the league-champion Pilots. Thats right, I said champion! For those of you who are as ignorant as I was about the ABL rules, the league tiebreaker goes to the winner of the season series. [...]

League Recap: At this point the Glacier Pilots look like they’re firmly in command, but it’s not settled yet. There are a lot of games left to play and it’s not out of the question for an epic collapse to occur. However, the Miners, Goldpanners and Chinooks have all been mathematically eliminated, leaving the Bucs [...]

Upon conclusion of the 2012 Alaska Baseball League All-Star Game, the players selected to the All-League teams and the recipients of the league awards — including Player of the Year and Top Prospect — were announced. The complete list of winners is listed below. Players were selected by a vote of team personnel. 2012 League [...]