Diablos Rojos sweep Sultanes and win their 17th title in the LMB

The Diablos Rojos del México have ended a decade-long wait for a new pennant in the Mexican Baseball League.

The “Scarlet Gang”, in Lorenzo Bundy’s first year as manager after being champion three times as a player in the 80s, defeated the Sultanes de Monterrey by a score of 4-2 in the fourth game of the King Series played at the Monterrey Baseball Stadium and took home their seventeenth title in history.

In an all-or-nothing move, the manager of the “Gray Ghosts,” Roberto Kelly, sent the leader of the rotation Julio Teherán as the starter for the game, but the scarlet team fell on the Colombian with a rally of four runs in the first inning thanks to the home run of José Marmolejos and the producing single of Julián Ornelas. Later, Jared Lakind, who was announced to start the game, put out the fire of Mexico by leaving them without runs in four innings of relief, although the Monterrey offense did not respond to a great outing by Brooks Hall, who kept the bats of the Monterrey team tied up, which had a streak of 29 consecutive innings without scoring.

With more pride and sporting courage, Monterrey got the Diablos’ closer, Tomohiro Anraku, into trouble and shook off the shutout with a hit by Azael Sánchez to right field for Ramiro Peña to discount the score in the ninth inning and then a groundout by Carlos Soto brought Jermaine Palacios to the plate.

Finally, the 27th out came on a fly ball by José Cardona, who had runners on first and third with two outs, to end a dramatic inning. The victory went to Hall with a seven-inning start, two hits and seven strikeouts, the loss went to Teherán with two-thirds, five hits and four runs allowed. 16 years after the last time the “Pingos” met the Sultanes in a title definition, the capital team celebrated a new title in Nuevo León. The scarlet team achieved its third sweep in the history of the Final Series of the Mexican Baseball League, the first was in 1974 over the Algodoneros de Unión Laguna and the second in 2014 against the Pericos de Puebla, in addition to finishing the Postseason with a streak of eight consecutive victories. The Sultanes lost their third King Series in the last four appearances they have had, being in 2018.2 the most recent occasion in which they were crowned and as a curious fact, in this instance they had never been swept in their 85 years of history in the summer circuit. Another peculiarity is that what happened 10 years ago was repeated, when the two most winning franchises in Mexican baseball, the Diablos Rojos del México and the Naranjeros de Hermosillo were crowned in the same year, now both teams already have 17 titles in their showcases. The MVP of the Final Series was José Marmolejos with seven RBIs, a home run and a .389 offensive average.