The El Paso Chihuahuas are off to the best 20 game start in team history with a 6-4 victory against the Salt Lake City Bees Wednesday evening in front of 5,964 fans at Southwest University Park. The Chihuahuas are now 15-5 on the season and are on an eight-game winning streak, while Salt Lake falls to 12-8 on the season.
Several players carried over their hitting streaks into Wednesday’s matchup with the Bee’s including Franmil Reyes who extended his hitting streak to nine games and Diego Goris extended his streak to eight games.
“He’s (Reyes) going to get up there and get some hits for us and he put us right back where we needed to be,” Rod Barajas, the Chihuahuas’s acting manager, said.
At the start of the matchup, things didn’t look too good for the Chihuahuas with pitcher Chris Huffman struggling on the mound allowing 3 runs against Salt Lake but shook off the rough start and retired 15 straight at bats for the Chihuahuas and are now 2-1 on the season on the mound for El Paso.
“That’s the probably the best performance we’ve had all year in my opinion. He (Huffman) was going to compete and he was going to battle for his teammates,” Barajas said.
When it came to getting hits the Chihuahuas delivered in bunches with a total of 14 hits against the Bees 7. Of those at bats Dusty Coleman who’s been in a hitting slump as of late came up big going 2-for- 4 and had two doubles including a one-run RBI double in the third inning that put El Paso on the board and they never looked back.
“You want guys who are reliable and who you know if you put them in cold they’re going to prepare themselves to compete and he did that tonight,” Barajas said.
The Chihuahuas continued to put runs on the board with a two-run RBI single by Diego Goris also in the third inning, and a two-run RBI single by Franmil Reyes in the 4th inning putting El Paso up 5-3. The last run of the night for the Chihuahuas came from Shane Peterson who grounded a force out allowing Diego Goris to put the Chihuahuas up 6-3.
Salt Lake only scored one more run since their 3 run first inning wake up call to El Paso scoring off a Jose Miguel Fernandez single making the score 6-4.
At the top of the 8th inning, the game was almost drastically changed as Nick Schultz made a miraculous catch with a game-tying run on base for Salt Lake basically saving the game for El Paso by the warning track.
“I saw the ball down the line and I tried to hustle and get there as fast as I could and I slid stuck out my glove and was hoping I didn’t miss and we’ll take it,” Nick Schultz said.
An area of concern during the game for the Chihuahuas was the health of 19-year-old standout infielder Luis Urias who left the game at the bottom of the first inning with an apparent injury to his hamstring.
“He should be alright, it’s early in the season we just wanna make sure all of our players are healthy, and its nothing major,” Barajas said.
The Chihuahuas continue their five-game home series against Salt Lake and nine game homestand at Southwest University Park against the Bees Thursday, April 26th.
The first pitch is set to be thrown at 6:35 P.M.
