BY TJ GARCIA | SPECIAL TO THE MONITOR
EDINBURG — The rain held out, Vela’s early runs held up and Edinburg Vela pitcher Nico Rodriguez out-dueled McHi’s Aaron Nixon to provide the SaberCats a 3-0 area-round victory Friday night in front of a large crowd at UTRGV Baseball Stadium.
Rodriguez struck out 13 McHi batters — including eight of the last 14 he faced — and surrendered just four hits to shutout the Bulldogs and hand Vela a 1-0 best-of-3 games series lead with Game 2 set for1 p.m. today at UTRGV. A third game, if necessary, would be played at 4 p.m.
Vela scored three runs in the first inning by tagging Nixon with two hits and leveraging another off a walk. It wasn’t much, but it was all they needed as Rodriguez, and Nixon, got into zones the rest of way and shut down each other’s offense.
“I just try and throw strikes no matter who I’m facing. Just go up there, throw strikes and give us the win,” Rodriguez said. “I felt like I had a good changeup, to go along with my fast ball just to mix it up and it was going great.”
Even though he stonewalled McHi most of the game, Rodriguez also relied on his defense to bail him out. Twice early in the game, McHi loaded the bases and came away empty-handed after Vela executed double plays to end the first and third innings.
In the fourth, McHi put a runner on third, but couldn’t get him home. It was a hard-luck loss for Nixon, who outside the first inning held Vela in check and got into a late-game groove where he struck out five of Vela’s last six batters.
On the night, Nixon hurled a three-hitter, fanned eight SaberCats and walked five. Vela coach Jaime Perez said Nixon pitched great and “got into a groove,” and that the SaberCats had to get to him early otherwise they would have been in for a long night.
“I thought we hit some good pitches. I thought we made some big plays. Those two double plays at the end of the innings kind of took the wind out of them a little bit,” Perez said. “Our number-one objective every time we go out and play is we try to drive pitch count up. Pitch count has changed the game of baseball.”
Nixon threw an unofficial 95 pitches Friday night but showed no ill effects. Rodriguez was over 100. But it was that first inning where both pitchers were knocked around that was the difference in the game. It just so happened that Vela was able to take advantage of loading the bases and McHi didn’t.
Leadoff batter Ivan Mendoza drew a walk. Rodriguez struck out, then Eric Martinez singled to left to move Mendoza up. Mendoza took third on a wild pitch and then clean-up batter Ramsey Amador walked to fill the bases.
Next, Nixon sat DH Marc Esquivel, but Jaime Perez got a base hit to left and drove in two runs and Amador later scored. That was it. That was the offense as Nixon fanned Isaac Lopez to end the inning but the damage had been done.
Vela made it stick and with the stellar pitching, that was the ballgame.