MAZATLAN 3, HERMOSILLO 1 IN MAZATLAN

Batting stars:  Hector Mora was 2-for-4 with a double.  Ricky Alvarez was 2-for-4 with a double.

Pitching stars:  Carlos Morales pitched six innings, giving up one run on six hits and no walks and striking out four.  Alejandro Soto pitched a scoreless inning, giving up a hit and a walk and striking out one.  Roberto Espinosa pitched a perfect inning, striking out one.  Jesus Pirela struck out two in a perfect inning.

Opposition stars:  Irving Lopez was 2-for-3 with two doubles.  Alex Robles was 2-for-4.  Rafael Martin struck out two in two shutout innings, giving up a hit and a walk.

The game:  Mazatlan opened the scoring in the second.  An error and a walk put men on first and second with one out, and a Mora single made it 1-0.  Mazatlan scored again in the fourth on walks to Ramon Rios and Ricardo Valenzuela and a double by Edson Garcia, making it 2-0.

Hermosillo got on the board in the fifth when Lopez led off with a double and scored on a pair of ground outs.  Mazatlan got the run back in the seventh when Carlos Munoz singled, Alvarez doubled, and Rios singled, leaving the score 3-1.

That was it.  The last seven Hermosillo batters were retired, and the score remained 3-1 Mazatlan.

WP:  Morales (2-0).  LP:  Jose Cerda (0-1).  S:  Pirela (6).

Notes:  Isaac Paredes was 1-for-4 and is batting .390.  Jose Augusto Figueroa was 0-for-5 and is batting .339.  Munoz was 1-for-3 and is batting .327.

Espinosa lowered his ERA to 2.12.  Pirela is down to 0.84.

Hermosillo was 0-for-6 with men in scoring position, stranding six.  Mazatlan was just 3-for-15, but getting fifteen at-bats with runners in scoring position is always a good thing.  They stranded ten.

Despite the low score, the game again took over three hours, coming in at 3:05.  Apparently the length of games is not just a major league baseball issue.

Record:  Mazatlan is 14-14, in seventh place, seven games behind the Yaquis de Obregon.  They are a half game behind sixth-place Jalisco, and also a half game out of fifth and just a game out of third.

Next game:  Mazatlan has an off day today.  They are at Navojoa Saturday.