Puerto Rican League: Games of December 26

A homer ignited a rally in Santurce.  It got late early in Ponce.

SANTURCE 3, CAGUAS 0 IN SANTURCE

Caguas:  Rey Navarro (Cincinnati) was 2-for-3 with a walk and two doubles.  Andy Gonzalez was 1-for-3 with a walk and a double.  Andres Santiago (Dodgers) pitched two shutout innings, giving up one hit and no walks.

Santurce:  Neftali Soto (Cincinnati) was 1-for-3 with a walk and a home run, his third.  Luis Rivera was 2-for-3 with a run.  Victor Mateo (Tampa Bay) struck out seven in 5.1 scoreless innings, allowing five hits and two walks.

The game:  All the runs were scored in the fifth.  Soto led off the inning with a homer.  Later on, Dickie Thon (Toronto) singled in a pair of runs.  The biggest Caguas scoring threat came in the seventh.  A one-out double was followed by a pair of two-out walks to load the bases, but a strikeout ended the inning.

PONCE 8, CAROLINA 1 IN PONCE

Carolina:  Luis Matos was 1-for-3 with a double.  Yoshitaka Hashimoto struck out three in three shutout innings, giving up four hits and no walks.

Ponce:  Jordan Lennerton (Detroit) was 2-for-4 with a walk and a double, driving in one.  Benji Gonzalez (Pittsburgh) was 3-for-5 with two runs and two RBIs.  Logan Williamson struck out seven in six shutout innings, allowing three hits and one walk.

The game:  Lennerton doubled in a run in the first to put Ponce on the board.  A six-run second then put the game out of reach early.  Reymond Fuentes (San Diego) doubled in two of the six runs, with two more scoring on a Gonzalez single.  The lone Carolina run came in the seventh.