The New Ulm Junior Legion and New Ulm VFW Silver are both having great baseball seasons so far.

The Junior Legion, at 14-2, is ranked number one among DI Minnesota Junior Legion teams.

Silver is currently 12-4 after a win Thursday night over Fairmont.

And New Ulm Legion Gold has won four straight games after a 3-0 win over St. Peter on Thursday night.

Both Mike Anderson, head coach of the Junior Legion, and Jeff Ferrell, head coach of New Ulm Silver, are happy with the play of their teams.

TOP-RANKED JUNIOR LEGION BOASTS DEEP PITCHING GROUP

Coach Anderson said that, despite being ranked number one in DI, he feels that there are a lot of good teams.

“Rankings are opinion polls, but I know with our pitching depth and how we approach the game, we are a tough team for anybody,” he said.

The Junior Legion’s team pitching ERA is a minuscule 1.90 per game as of Thursday.

“We have Tanner Backer, Mitchell Hopp, Candon Briggs — who has pitched the most innings — Josh Forstner, Colin Forstner,” coach Anderson said. “We are really fortunate to have a team that, no matter how many games we play in a week, we will never run out of pitching.”

New Ulm Junior Gold pitchers have struck out 108 opposing hitters.

And offensively, Junior Gold is solid with a team batting average of .320 as of Thursday.

Heading into Friday’s tournament, they were led by Alex Portner’s .429 batting average, followed by Briggs at .417. Evan Blekestad is at .357, Backer at .342 and Levi Hopp at .324.

“Eight of our nine starters are hitting over .300 and this is one of the fastest teams that I have ever coached,” Coach Anderson said. “We love the double steals and getting real creative on the bases.”

Gold players have stolen 85 bases in their 16 games.

And their batters are not prone to striking out, as they have only struck out 68 times in 16 games for an average of just 4.25 strikeouts a game.

One player that coach Anderson talks glowingly about is Alex Portner, who coach Anderson thinks is one of the best players around.

“He is one of the most exciting players in New Ulm — he has a very tall ceiling and I do not even feel that he has even scratched the surface of the ball player that he can become.”

He added that Junior Gold can also use small-ball if needed.

“Alan [Woitas, Junior Gold assistant coach] and I employ the same theory of get them on, get them over and get them in,” he said. “And if you asked our team right now, they will tell you that we have not played our best baseball yet this season.”

Coach Anderson said that, 16 games in, he would like to see his team clean up some easy errors.

Junior Gold is at the Alexandria Tournament this weekend. The team won its first two games of the tournament against Aitkin and Elk River VFW on Friday.

SILVER CAN COMPETE FOR DISTRICT TITLE

Ferrell, meanwhile, said that he is mildly surprised by his team’s 14-4 mark.

“I had heard that the talent level was good and I was happy on how we did in our tournament — we played up to the tougher teams,” he said. “This is a good group of kids. When we first moved to New Ulm, I had heard that there was really a good group of kids coming up in the baseball system and they keep this group together.

“And there are two sides to that theory — one is you want to give the kids the best competition. I think that at that age level that it is important to experience success together. I know a lot of kids want to play the best competition. But at what expense? This will bring success for the future for legion baseball in New Ulm.”

Ferrell said his team can hit the ball pretty well.

Silver continues a five-game tournament in Brookings, South Dakota, this weekend. Silver started the tournament with a 6-3 win over Renner on Friday afternoon and then shut out Aberdeen 9-0 Friday night.

“Then we start the districts next weekend in Sleepy Eye and overall we play all aspects of the game — pitching, hitting and defense — pretty well,” Ferrell said.

In Silver’s district are Mankato American, Hutchinson, Sleepy Eye and Marshall.

“We split with Mankato and we did lose to Hutch at the start of the season, but we only had nine players at that game,” Ferrell said. “I think that we can contend for the district. We have the speed, we can play good defense. But again for us it is figuring out who can play where. This is a fun group of kids to coach.”

SENIOR LEGION

HITTING ITS STRIDE

New Ulm Legion Gold, who is now riding a five-game winning streak going into the weekend with a 10-8 record, may be finding themselves recently.

“We are done experimenting, so I know who has to be in the lineup now,” Gold head coach Curt Forbrook said. “Our pitching is strong — we have four solid pitchers in Jake Finstad, Colin Anderson, Dirk Haynes and Kolton Achmann.”

Haynes and Finstad are now 3-0, with Colin Anderson 2-0.

One thing that has been consistent this season that Forbrook does not want to see are the errors, even in wins.

“It has been better of late, but it always seems that we have one or two errors a game and we cannot shake that for whatever reason,” he said. “When a pitcher has to get more than three outs an inning, that makes it tough.

“I do believe that we can compete for the district title” he said “But we have to clean up our errors, plain and simple.”