Cuba Baseball Season at Half Way Mark
Industriales on top, Santiago de Cuba and Artemisa qualify on final day
HAVANA TIMES — The Cuban 2013-2014 baseball season reached the half way point on Sunday with eight teams qualifying to continue on and eight others eliminated.
After a seesaw first 45 games, Industriales finished on top and Santiago de Cuba qualified for the second half on the final day of play. Artemisa had done the same one day before.
Santiago clinched its position with a 6-1 win over Matanzas on Sunday. Artemisa did the same by defeating Granma the day before, making Ciego de Avila’s final game 11-1 over Mayabeque useless.
Now the teams will play a total of 42 games (6 against each rival) in the race to reach the playoffs.
Here are the final standings for the first half of the season.
Note: Three teams tied for 7th place in wins and losses (Santiago, Artemisa and Ciego de Avila) with the first two qualifying because of the record of head to head games between these teams.
1) Industriales 27-15 —
2) Villa Clara 26-16 1.0
3) Matanzas 27-17 1.0
4) Isla de la Juventud 27-18 1.5
5) Pinar del Rio 26-18 2.0
6) Holguin 25-20 3.5
7) Santiago de Cuba 24-21 4.5
8) Artemisa 24-21 4.5
Eliminated Teams
9) Ciego de Avila 24-21 4.5
10) Las Tunas 21-22 6.5
11) Mayabeque 20-24 8.0
12) Granma 19-25 9.0
13) Cienfuegos 18-27 10.5
14) Camaguey 17-28 11.5
15) Guantanamo 15-30 13.5
16) Sancti Spiritus 14-31 14.5
At the season’s half way point Maikel Contreras of Holguin leads the league with a .400 batting average. Dary Reinier of Camaguey led with 8 homers and Yadiel Hernandez of Matanzas finished first with 38 RBIs.
Frank Monthiet of Industriales leads the league with a 1.17ERA; Yosvani Torres of Pinar del Rio is tops with 7 wins, and Jose Angel Garcia of Artemisa has 15 saves.
It should also be noted here that Industriales has not yet finished on top of the standing. Industriales still has three suspended games to be replayed between January 4-7 and Villa Clara must also play two additional games (and Matanzas and Pinar one each). So the top four positions could easily and most likely change.
The batting leader was actually Maikel Caceres of Holguin and the Home Run champion’s name is Dary Bartolome (Camaguey).