El Paso crushes Albuquerque 12-2 for fourth straight win

El Paso turned an early start in Albuquerque into a full-scale mugging, rolling to a 12-2 win Thursday and stretching its season-best streak to four straight. The Chihuahuas did it the hard way for the Isotopes, too: they scored in the first inning again, blew the game open with a five-run sixth, and kept piling on until the series had tilted to 35-10 through the afternoon.

The tone was set before most of the announced crowd of 6,509 had settled in at Rio Grande Credit Union Field at Isotopes Park. Nick Solak opened the scoring with an RBI single in the top of the first, Nick Schnell followed with a sacrifice fly, and El Paso once again hit Albuquerque with an immediate punch. That was the seventh time in the last eight games the Chihuahuas scored in the first inning, a run of early pressure that is starting to look less like a trend and more like a habit.

Anthony Vilar was the loudest bat in the box, going 3-for-5 with a double and four RBIs. He was part of a lineup that kept the innings from settling down: Mason McCoy, Nate Mondou, Sung-Mun Song and Solak each had two hits, while Pablo Reyes extended his on-base streak to 20 games. When a Triple-A team is getting that kind of traffic from top to bottom, the damage tends to come in waves, and El Paso had its biggest one in the sixth.

That frame turned a comfortable lead into a rout. The Chihuahuas scored five times in an 11-batter inning, the kind of burst that punishes any mistake and exposes a tired pitching staff. It also fit the broader shape of this stretch for El Paso, which has now won seven of its last nine and has been separating from opponents early instead of waiting around for one late swing to decide things.

The final margin mattered for more than just the box score. El Paso’s 15-15 record put it back at .500 for the first time since April 8, and after a 16-2 win earlier in the week, the Chihuahuas set a new season high with the four-game winning streak. In a long Pacific Coast League season, that is how a club announces itself: not with one big night, but with enough pounding, enough runs, and enough first-inning heat to make the rest of the league take notice.