Cuba-Puerto Rico

Havana, October 14 (ACN)-- Victim of its very poor offense, the Cuban under-23 baseball team lost 0-5 to Puerto Rico on Thursday in its debut at the World Championship held at the Tianmu Stadium in Taipei, China, a tournament in which games are played in seven innings.

The team coached by Alain Álvarez showed very wet powder in this debut, as it could barely connect two singles against four pitchers, sent to the mound by former Major League Baseball and Puerto Rican manager Juan Igor González, all with deliveries over 90 miles.

With such lousy offensive support, it is impossible to achieve a good result. The two hits came from Havana right fielder Cristián Hidalgo, who gave a double in the first inning to starter Alexander Castro, and from Tuner middle infielder Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, on a bunt at the beginning of the sixth inning.

And since the batting was conspicuous by its absence, the Cuban team could not take advantage of the five bases on balls and the ball hit by the Puerto Rican pitchers.

Puerto Rico scored its first two runs in the fourth inning against starter and loser Naykel Cruz, who had tied them up with six strikeouts and just one hit.

However, in the fourth act, after fanning the Ross bullpen, starter Pedro Pablo Revilla made a costly error and three consecutive singles followed, including a run-scoring single by left fielder Pablo Sánchez, which caused Naykel to leave the box and be replaced by Marlon Vega.

The other three Puerto Rican runs that led to the victory came in the seventh inning in which they only hit two hits, including a double by Ricardo Torres against Vega, valid for a pair of runs.

Relievers Andy Vargas and Alex Guerra were not controlled and gave three successive tickets. The last out of that inning was made by Luis Serpa.

For today Cuba has scheduled a duel against the Australian squad and the starter will be the left-handed Oscar Hernandez from Villaclare.