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.