LA PUENTE — Bishop Amat pitcher Justin Peinado finished off St. Paul with his sixth strikeout on Friday, then pointed to the sky with a quick prayer.

It was another stellar performance for the senior lefty, who threw a complete- game shutout and scattered five hits in a 4-0 victory over St. Paul.

This has been the story of Amat’s season. It entered Friday’s game against St. Paul with a team ERA of 1.73, and Peinado, who improved to 3-0, lowered his ERA to 0.61 in 34 2/3 innings of work with 33 strikeouts.

Bishop Amat improved to 12-2 and 6-0 in the Del Rey League, beating the Swordsmen (10-5, 4-4) for the second time this week, and concluding a three-game sweep in league play.

On Tuesday, Amat junior Izaac Muniz went 5 2/3 innings and had 11 strikeouts in a 4-1 win over St. Paul in nine innings.

“The pitching is always good here,” Peinado said. “We have depth in the bullpen and we have depth with our starters. It helps when you always have two guys who can go seven innings. It’s a house of arms.”

While the stat sheet looked clean for Peinado, the Swordsmen made him work. They had runners in scoring position in four of the seven innings. But Peinado buckled down and got big outs when he needed them.

“I wasn’t satisfied with my performance, I didn’t feel like myself the first couple innings,” Peinado said. “But the last inning I was finally myself. You just have to keep working.”

Amat assistant coach Chuy Peinado, who took over this week while head coach Joe Hoggatt is in Oklahoma for his father’s funeral, was glad they could get it done while their coach was away.

“This was a big week for us, we’ve had really good practices and we’re getting ready for the National Classic (tournament) next week,” Chuy Peinado said. “This was a big win for Joe. I know he missed being out here. We wish him and his family the best.”

St. Paul pitcher Fernie Soto was strong early, but fell behind when Bishop Amat’s Joaquin Ortiz hit a deep sacrifice to center with the bases loaded that brought in Roman Sanchez for a 1-0 lead in the fourth inning.

Amat’s Santiago Ramirez tripled to lead off the fifth inning. After Levi Altamirano walked and stole second, Omar Arretche belted a single to left that scored them both for a 3-0 lead. After Arretche worked himself to third, Sanchez’s ground out scored Arretche to extend their lead to 4-0.

Although St. Paul managed only five hits, they hit the ball hard. Robert Encinas Jr., Tristan Foster and Marcus Munoz all had doubles, but none of them brought any runners home.

“We had opportunities today, we had a lot of guys in scoring position,” St. Paul coach RJ Lan said. “I thought we kind of hit like they did but they got their hits in a row and unfortunately we didn’t get ours in a row. This week we just struggled with hitting. Their pitchers did their jobs, kept us off balance and threw away. We’ve been working on stuff like that but this week we struggled. That’s baseball.”