Venezuelan View: Games of 12/17

A good inning for Shairon Martis.  A pinch-runner wins the game with his bat.  Flores had the Wilmer to win for Magallanes.

LA GUAIRA 1, ARAGUA 0 IN LA GUAIRA

Twins:  Oswaldo Arcia (Aragua) was used as a pinch-hitter and was 0-for-1.  Shairon Martis (La Guaira) pitched a scoreless inning, giving up two hits and one walk.

Aragua:  Ronny Cedeno (San Diego) was 1-for-4 with a triple.  Hector Gimenez was 2-for-3 with a walk.  Jose Capellan pitched five shutout innings, giving up two hits and one walk with four strikeouts.

La Guaira:  Abel Nieves was 1-for-1 with a home run.  Carlos Sanchez (White Sox) was 1-for-3 with a double.  Henderson Alvarez pitched three shutout innings, allowing one hit and one walk with two strikeouts.

The game:  There was no scoring until the ninth when Nieves, who had entered the game in the seventh as a pinch-runner, hit a one-out home run.  Aragua's biggest threat came in the fifth, when they had runners on first and second with none out and second and third with one out.

MARGARITA 8, MAGALLANES 2 IN MAGALLANES

Margarita:  Wilmer Flores (Mets) was 3-for-4 with a walk and two home runs (his second and third), driving in five.  Alberto Gonzalez (San Diego) was 2-for-5 with a double and a run.  Eric Berger (Houston) pitched six innings, giving up one run on two hits and five walks with three strikeouts.

Magallanes:  Adonis Garcia (Yankees) was 1-for-5 with a home run, his seventh.  Lew Ford was 1-for-4 with a walk and a double.  Sergio Perez struck out five in five innings, allowing two runs on six hits and three walks.

The game:  Flores hit a two-run homer in the first for Margarita.  Magallanes got one back in the bottom of the first on a sacrifice fly.  There was no more scoring until the eighth, when Margarita got six runs to put the game out of reach.  Two runs scored on wild pitches, one on a sacrifice fly, and Flores hit a three-run homer to cap off the inning.

LARA 9, CARACAS 1 IN LARA

Caracas:  Bobby Abreu was 1-for-3 with a run.

Lara:  Jairo Perez was 2-for-3 with a walk, a double, and a home run (his seventh), driving in three.  Mike Moustakas (Kansas City) was 3-for-4 with two doubles and an RBI.  Roenis Elias (Seattle) pitched five innings, allowing an unearned run on four hits and no walks with four strikeouts.

The game:  Perez hit a two-run double to give Lara a 2-0 first-inning lead.  An RBI ground out put Caracas on the board in the fifth, but Lara responded in the bottom of the fifth, getting an RBI triple by Joe Thurston, and run-scoring singles by Guilder Rodriguez (Texas) and Moustakas to go up 5-1.  Lara got one more in the seventh and three in the eighth to put the game out of reach.