Miners look for pitching consistency

By Lethbridge Herald on May 13, 2025.

By Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

The Lethbridge Miners American Legion ‘A’ baseball team  have kicked off a new season experiencing a quick turnaround from try outs to game play and are hoping  to find quick progress from a whole  new pitching staff as the 2025 season goes along.

“Preparation’s  always tough going into the start of the year, just because we have a very short window  between try outs and the Ron Matthews tournament,” said Nicholas Ankermann, Miners head coach.

“So it was a very big turnaround. We saw a lot of kids through high school baseball, high school academy, so we had an idea of how the kids were as players. But seeing them in the tryouts and everything like that helped us kind of  solidify the spots that we were wanting on our team.”

The Miners will have a whole new pitching  rotation this year after all of their pitchers from last year graduated to the ‘AA’ Elks.

“We’ll definitely have some trial with our pitching staff,” said Ankermann.

“We have kind of an idea in our mind of who we would like to be starters. We saw them a lot last year because a lot of them were pitchers on the (Lethbridge American Legion)  Lakers.”

The coaching staff will be looking for consistency from the new pitchers.

“We just want them to be able to compete, fill it up, throw strikes and give us the best chance,” said Ankermann.

Ankermann saw early signs of players wanting to leave what  they had out there on the field this past weekend during their  Ron Matthews home tournament and something he feels is going to be their strength.

“ It wasn’t just a couple of players that contributed,” said Ankermann.

“We were down a few players with injuries and graduation, so we only had usually about 11 or 12 kids per game. So every kid, whether they were on the bench or in the game, they stepped up.”

Ankermann spoke about the leadership and who is ready to step up in that capacity.

“A lot of the returning players are ready to step up and be leaders,” said Ankermann.

“That’s one of the  things we did mention to all of the returning guys in their one-on-one meetings,  we want them to step up (and) be leaders on the team.”

The Miners opened up their season by winning their home Ron Matthews tournament last weekend  and will open up league play on Sunday when they host Medicine Hat.

“Just keeping  up with the intensity that  we brought that  entire weekend,” said Ankermann, on how the team can build off the tournament win.”