Off to a great start

Published 11:31 pm Tuesday, June 19, 2007

EVERETT – Edward Paredes has already shown he has the goods to succeed at Class AAA.

So it was no surprise that when faced with a Northwest League lineup Tuesday night, he mowed it down like his name was John Deere.

Paredes helped the Everett AquaSox open the season in style with a dominant start, and the Sox defeated the Yakima Bears 5-1 in their Northwest League opener.

Before an Everett Memorial Stadium crowd of 3,465, Paredes tossed six shutout innings as the Sox breezed from start to finish.

“Absolutely not,” Everett manager Mike Tosar responded when asked whether he could have had a better start to the season. “We got a combination of outstanding pitching by Paredes and offensively we came out with our bats and showed some of the team speed we’ve got.”

It was a comprehensive victory for Everett, which outplayed the Bears in every facet of the game. But it was Paredes who stood tallest, despite his modest 6-foot stature.

The 20-year-old lefty from the Dominican Republic was stellar when he made his first professional appearance in the United States on Thursday, tossing five no-hit innings for the Class AAA Tacoma Rainiers.

He wasn’t quite as stingy Tuesday, but it was close. Paredes was unfazed throughout his six innings, allowing just two singles and two walks. When he wasn’t registering one of his four strikeouts, he was causing the Yakima batters to pound the ball into the ground. At one point Paredes retired 13 straight.

“He attacks the zone,” Tosar said. “He maintains his fastball down in the zone, he throws his breaking pitch for a strike and he throws his changeup for a strike. He has command of all three of his pitches.

“This was really my first look at Paredes,” Tosar added. “I got the game report from Tacoma and they were very pleased with his performance. That has to be a confidence booster, to have that type of outing at triple-A, and he was able to carry that over into this outing as well. It was good for him to continue that and hopefully next time around he’ll do the same thing.”

Paredes also got plenty of help. The Sox pounded out 11 hits, played near-flawless defense and ran wild on the basepaths, swiping five bags. It was a far cry from Sunday’s preparation game, when the Sox lost 10-5 to the semipro Everett Merchants

“If we can continue this for the whole year, that would be very nice,” said center fielder Gregory Halman, who had two hits and three stolen bases. “I think everybody got into it and I don’t see any reason why we couldn’t continue this the whole year.”

Manelik Pimentel, Joe Dunigan and Ogui Diaz also had two hits apiece, and Kalian Sams and Deybis Benitez smacked two-run doubles as everyone got involved on offense for Everett.

The only blot on Everett’s register was Aaron Hanke’s solo home run leading off the top of the seventh inning.

Yakima starting pitcher Bryant Thompson took the loss. In five innings the right-hander gave up five runs on 10 hits, walking none and striking out seven.

Everett wasted little time getting on the board this season, scoring two runs in the bottom of the first inning. Singles by Edilio Colina and Pimentel were followed by Sams’ two-run double to the left-center wall, staking the Sox to a 2-0 lead.

The Sox tacked three more on in the third. Halman lined a long single off the center-field wall, stole second and third, then scored on Pimentel’s single through a drawn-in infield. Dunigan singled to put runners at first and second, then Benitez blasted a double off the center-field wall that brought both runners home, and the Sox found themselves with a 5-0 lead.

Yakima finally got on the board in the seventh after Paredes had departed. Hanke, the first batter to face reliever Shawn Kelley, belted a drive over the wall in dead center, making it 5-1. But that’s all the Bears could muster.