With eight games remaining, the IV Cuban Baseball Elite League enters its decisive curve today with Industriales and Las Tunas almost safe and three contenders vying for a spot in the semifinals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Starting this Thursday, the schedule ignites three key matches: Industriales hosts Holgu\u00edn at the Latinoamericano<\/em> Stadium, Artemisa visits Matanzas at the Victoria<\/em> de Gir\u00f3n<\/em> Stadium, and Las Tunas opens its home court, the Julio Antonio Mella Stadium, to Mayabeque\u2014games that could significantly alter the outcome of the playoffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Leones<\/em> (21-11) are marching along as the favorites, fueled by a stifling pitching staff (4.57 ERA, 1.40 WHIP, 132 strikeouts), a stellar defense (.983), and timely hitting (.300 batting average, 38 home runs, 21 stolen bases), making their playoff berth seem a formality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Los<\/em> Cazadores<\/em> (17-13) are close behind thanks to the league\u2019s best batting average (.333) and supporting pitching (5.09 ERA), although their glove (second-to-last, .969) is a weakness that could lead to scares on close nights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Matanzas (10-19) is staring from the edge of the abyss, and although the math doesn\u2019t rule them out, their performance has been fading, so their immediate role may be more that of a judge than a contender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Los Cachorros de Holgu\u00edn<\/em> (16-16) boast the best offense\u2014leading the league in runs (216) and home runs (56)\u2014and hold a direct advantage in the head-to-head series against the Cazadores de Artemisa<\/em> (5-3) and are tied with the Huracanes de Mayabeque<\/em> (4-4), but their closing matches against Industriales and Las Tunas are a steep climb where every out will count for two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Los<\/em> Cazadores<\/em> (14-16) and the Huracanes<\/em> (14-17) are moving forward like parallel shadows, separated by half a game and with a head-to-head record favoring Mayabeque (4-3). Their hot bats (.313 and .318) and pitching that gives up too much ground makes each series a toss-up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If things go according to plan, Industriales and Las Tunas will secure two spots, while Holgu\u00edn holds a slight advantage for the third, and the fourth will be decided in the Artemisa-Mayabeque series, where the schedule points to an open, tense, and potentially upset-prone finish.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With eight games remaining, the IV Cuban Baseball Elite League enters its decisive curve today with Industriales and Las Tunas almost safe and three contenders vying for a spot in… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11518,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[42],"class_list":["post-11517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"authors":[{"term_id":42,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"radio-habana-cuba","display_name":"Radio Habana Cuba","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11519,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11517\/revisions\/11519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11517"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=11517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}