Cuban Baseball: Camaguey has Hard Time to Beat Mayabeque

HAVANA, Cuba, Oct 6 (acn) Camagüey defeated Mayabeque 4-3 in extra innings to achieve an important victory in its aspirations to access the second phase of the Cuban baseball championship.

The winners deployed an offensive of 13 hits but only managed to score four runs, the last one in the tenth inning thanks to a decisive RBI-single by outfielder Dariel Aviles off the loser Jayner Rodriguez.
Aviles led Camaguey´s attack when hitting 3 for 5 with two RBIs in a match won by closer Carlos Alfredo Rodriguez, who had a perfect performance in two innings and two thirds of work.
With this victory, Camagüey completed their qualifying stage with 24 wins and 21 losses, appearing right now eighth in the standings, but must still wait for the outcomes of other pending games to confirm their presence in the playoffs.
Teams ranking from first to fourth spots will access directly to the elite stage of the national baseball classic, while the other two tickets will be defined among those finishing from fifth to eighth by way of a playoff series.
Matanzas (40-3) and Ciego de Avila (29-16) already guaranteed their qualification for the second phase of the championship, and are followed in the standings by Granma (24-17), Guantanamo and Holguin (23-18), Villa Clara (22-18), Isla de la Juventud (23-19) and Camagüey (24-21).
Meanwhile, Las Tunas (20-20), Industriales (21-23), Pinar del Río (18-22), Artemisa and Cienfuegos (18-27), Santiago de Cuba (13-28), Sancti Spiritus (13-31) and Mayabeque (11-32) appear outside privileged positions.
Today, in the continuation of the pending games, Isla de la Juventud will face Holguin and Villa Clara will rival Pinar del Rio, and there will be a double program in both cases in the soil of those mentioned first.