The Miners, led by Joe Wiley, Jordan Adler, and Bryce Goldbach, will be participating in the inaugural season of the LABL. The team is largely built from a collection of ballplayers that participated in the Las Americas league last season as well as new faces.

The strengths of the Miners are its pitching and defense. On the mound, the Miners are led by veteran Adam Lesshafft, who is entering his fifth season of adult baseball in the Lexington area. Hard throwing righties Alex Lester, Keith Trumbauer, Mikhail Jenkins give the Miners plenty of firepower and lefty Bryce Goldbach is a crafty southpaw who can locate and keep hitters off-balanced.  The rest of the staff is comprised of Michael Dobie, Brendan Richardson, and Elias Edenstrom.

Defensively, the Miners feature the sure hands of Keith Trumbauer and Brendan Richardson on the infield, as well as the rangy Joe Wiley and Sean Taylor in the outfield. The Miners depth will allow for the coaching staff to have great flexibility with the lineup.

While the Miners surely won’t be confused with the Big Red Machine, the lineup features good depth and a scrappy group of hitters. Billy Lester and Aaron Prater add some pop to the middle of the Miners line up, while Keith Trumbauer, Bryce Goldbach, and Jordan Adler look to carryover the strong seasons at the plate from last season.

While the Miners return a core group of guys from last season’s Knights of the Las Americas Baseball League – Joe Wiley, Jordan Adler, Keith Trumbauer, Billy Lester, Brendan Richardson, Mikhail Jenkins, Bryce Goldbach, Adam Lesshafft, and Sean Taylor – the new faces to the Miners should become household names by the end of the season. New faces to the Miners include – Carlos Armenteros, Alex Lester, Aaron Prater, Mike Dobie, Chad Wang, David Lucky, Chris Owsley, Elias Edenstrom, and Jon Bryant. Carlos Armenteros is a rangy second basemen with smooth hands in the middle infield, Alex Lester will be big piece of the Miners pitching staff, Aaron Prater will be a steadying hand behind the plate, Mike Dobie and Chris Owsley provide versatility all over the field, Jon Bryant adds speed to the lineup, Elias Edenstrom offers pop from the left side, and Chad Wang and David Lucky provide steady gloves at second base.

With the conclusion of the preseason schedule the Miners enter opening day excited about the upcoming season and looking forward to not only winning some games, but also having a lot of fun. The scrimmage slate showed the Miners have plenty to improve upon during the season, but the team’s good attitude and work ethic should bear fruit as the season rolls along. It’s time to put on the hard hats.