El Paso blanks Tacoma again, extends winning streak to three

El Paso did more than post a 4-1 win Thursday night. The Chihuahuas used another one-run clampdown to seize full control of the series, quieting Tacoma in a game that mattered far more for how it was played than for the final margin.

Mason McCoy’s career-long 14-game hitting streak ended when he went 0-for-2 with a walk, but the bigger story was El Paso’s ability to win without turning the night into a slugfest. Thursday marked the third time this season the Chihuahuas held an opponent to only one run, a useful reminder that this club can survive when the ball is not jumping and the opponent is trying to drag the game into the late innings. In a league built on offense, that kind of control travels.

The win also gave El Paso its third straight over the Rainiers and continued a pattern that has started to define this homestand. After erasing a 6-0 deficit to beat Tacoma 11-10 on Wednesday, the Chihuahuas followed with a far more controlled performance, showing they can win in both chaos and calm. They had won the first three games of each of their last two series, and they had already taken six of eight meetings from Tacoma this season. That is how a team turns a matchup into a statement: not by one explosion, but by stacking different kinds of wins against the same opponent.

Tacoma entered the night at 16-20, and El Paso at 18-18, so the result tightened the Pacific Coast League West race and kept the pressure on the Rainiers before the series moved on. The next game at Southwest University Park brought another pitching test, with Tacoma lining up Casey Lawrence, who came in at 1-3 with a 5.21 ERA, against Sean Boyle for El Paso. For the Chihuahuas, that is the real value of this stretch: they are not just winning games, they are dictating the terms of a series, one suppressed lineup at a time.