South Miami Holds Off Coral Park For Quality Win

BOX SCORE

The South Miami Cobras won their third straight game with a 5-3 decision over the Coral Park Rams on Tuesday, and first-year Cobras Manager Ozzie Gonzalez now has his team at .500 thanks to their best team performance of the season. The pitching was stellar, the offense erupted for three runs in the third to take control, and everything seemed to click correctly to earn the win.

“It was one heck of a game and the boys pulled it through,” Gonzalez said. “It was honestly a great, great game. It was one of these games that we needed to be in it all the way through against a good, scrappy team, and we came out ready to go from the first inning. We started off hot, then cooled down there in the middle. We had a couple base running errors, but after that we locked back in and played our game. I think our boys are figuring it out, little by little.”

Every batter reached base to contribute on offense, and the Cobras were particularly successful executing in the clutch situations. Omar Gonzalez drove in a pair of runs, Jake Rodriguez was 2-for-3 and had the go-ahead RBI, and Kris Vega delivered the winning run with an RBI single that scored Jeremy Finol to make it 4-1 in the third. Michael Acosta also had two hits in going 2-for-4, and Adrian Salazar was 1-for-2 with a double and a run.

Pitching is what kept South Miami in it all along. Once the Cobras had the lead, the hurlers took care of the rest.

“What kept us in it was the great pitching performance by Ivan Mascaro,” Gonzalez said. “In his six innings he only gave up two earned runs, and three runs in total, only allowing five hits, and he got six strikeouts.”

Mascaro picked up his second win of the season, while Salazar came on in relief to earn the save in the seventh. Salazar went 1-2-3 with a pair of strikeouts to preserve the win.

“So it’s a young team that’s only been together since January,” Gonzalez said. “We didn’t have a fall ball, but the boys are finally going through it with a game that everybody came through. Everybody contributed to this game. So I couldn’t say anything more. I’m very proud of the boys and very excited coming next week and keeping this three-game winning streak going.”

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