Mexico goes deep in little league to beat Taiwan 3-2

Marcelo Martinez struck out 12 as Reynosa of Mexico held off a late rally to stay undefeated at the Little League World Series with a 3-2 victory over Taoyuan little league team Kuei-Shan of Taiwan on Tuesday.

Mexico were to face Chiba City of Japan in an international semi-final yesterday, while Taiwan meet Willemstad of Curacao in the other semi-final today.

Martinez didn’t allow a hit, but was lifted with two outs in the fifth after reaching his 85-pitch limit.

Taiwan broke up the no-hitter when Sung Wen-hua homered off reliever Jorge Maldonado to open the bottom of the sixth. Taiwan got another run on two outfield errors on the same play, but reliever Raul Rojas struck out the final Taiwanese hitter.

Mexico hit three solo homers.

Otherwise, Tuesday served as an anticlimactic end to pool play, as all the teams playing had either already been eliminated, or already advanced.

Dhahran of Saudi Arabia scored five times on just one hit during a sloppy first inning by Maracaibo of Venezuela in a 5-3 win.

Reliever John Sheppard held Venezuela hitless for the last three innings in the first win for Saudi Arabia, which was comprised mainly of children of US citizens.

Trailing 1-0, Cameron Durley had Saudi Arabia’s sole hit with a two-run single in the bottom of the first. They scored three more times on an error, a hit batter and a walk.

Venezuela also took advantage of miscues, with Oberto Munoz scoring on a three-base error in the second and a wild pitch, and Mikey Edie scoring on an error in the third.

Vancouver of British Columbia gave up an eight-run lead, then rallied with four runs in the sixth for a wild 14-13 win over Ramstein Air Force Base of Germany.

Chris Holba and Matt Zembraski went deep during an 11-run fifth that put the team made up of children of US soldiers or employees ahead 13-10.

Canada then rallied when Anthony Cusati hit a two-run shot. After loading the bases, Katie Reyes’ two-run single put Canada back on top.

In the US pool, Austin Batchelor homered and scored three runs as Peabody of Massachusetts used a nine-run third inning to pull away from Russellville of Kentucky 12-3. Batchelor also struck out seven on the mound for the win.