Cuban Stars of the Week
http://www.baseballdecuba.com/IndexEng.asp announced that the player of the week was Yulieski Gourriel. This came as no surprise based on his assault of the Cuban pitching last week when he hit six homeruns and 14 RBIs. There appears to be an interesting battle in Cuba with the top three Cuban hitters over the years all vying for the batting title. Alexei Bell is still the league leader with a .444 average. He has 11 homeruns and 44 RBIs. In second place is Alfredo Despaigne, who is hitting .394 with 16 homeruns and 50 RBIs. Finally, in third place you have Gourriel who is hitting .383 with 18 homeruns and 50 RBIs.
With Guantanamo building a six game lead and Sancti Spiritus now up by four and a half games the hitting race between these three players may be more exciting than the race for the first place spot. Of course, the top four teams in each division make the playoffs so winning your division doesn’t guarantee you the championship. Each division still seems to have five teams battling for those four playoff spots with the bottom three teams needing to establish big winning streaks to get in the race. That is probably not going to happen.
The pitcher of the week was given to Cienfuegos Elephants closer Yasiel Morales. He got two wins in relief to get the nod. The top pitcher in the league is still Maikel Folch, who is 8-1 with a 1.50 ERA. He is followed closly by veteran Pedro Lazo at 5-2, 1.77. Guantanamo Indians Yunier Colon is perfect at 7-0 with a 2.33 ERA. With Aroldis Chapman gone the strikeout leader goes to Dalier Hinojosa, who has 68 whiffs in 68 innings pitched and is 6-2 with a 3.54 ERA.