MAZATLAN 6, CULIACAN 2 AT MAZATLAN

Batting stars:  Isaac Paredes was 3-for-4 with a home run, his second.  Ricky Alvarez was 1-for-4 with a home run, his fifth.

Pitching stars:  Ignacio Marrujo pitched four innings, giving up two runs (one earned) on four hits and two walks and striking out two.  Five pitchers each pitched a scoreless inning:  Marco Antonio Duarte, Gabino Avalos, Marco Antonio Rivas, Roberto Espinosa, and Jesus Pirela.

Opposition stars:  Alejandro Chavez pitched five shutout innings of relief, giving up no hits and two walks and striking out three.  Joey Meneses was 2-for-4 with a double.  Jose Guadalupe Chavez was 2-for-4 with a walk.

The game:  Almost everything happened in the first inning.  In the top of the first, Chavez walked, Michael Wing singled, Meneses had an RBI single, and a fielder's choice made it 2-0 Culiacan.  In the bottom of the inning, singles by Ramon Rios and Paredes were followed by an error that loaded the bases with one out.  Anthony Giansanti then hit a bases-clearing triple and scored on a wild pitch.  Alvarez followed with a home run to make it 5-2 Mazatlan.

And there it stayed, inning after inning.  The only other score was when Paredes led off the bottom of the eighth with a home run, bringing us to the final score of 6-2.

WP:  Duarte (1-2).  LP:  Hector Galvan (0-1).  S:  None.

Notes:  Paredes raised his average to .365.  Italo Mota was used as a pinch-runner and remains at .348.  Carlos Munoz was 0-for-4 and is batting .317.

Avalos has an ERA of zero.  Rivas is at 2.08.  Espinosa is at 2.37.  Pirela is at 1.42.

Mazatlan had just three at-bats with men in scoring position, going 1-for-3.  In contrast, Culiacan had eleven at-bats with men in scoring position, going 2-for-11.

Record:  Mazatlan is 16-18, in seventh place, six games behind Obregon.  They are only one game out of fifth place.

Next game:  Mazatlan hosts Jalisco tonight.