Taiwanese pitcher Wang Chien-ming (王建民), who was one of the final additions to the Kansas City Royals’ 25-man roster this year, took the pitcher’s mound in the Royals’ fourth game of the season on Saturday, walking one batter and sending three others out in the ninth inning with his trademark sinker.
It was Wang’s first major league game since Aug. 25, 2013, after gaining a surprise pick on the roster.
“I am happy to be able to stand on the mound,” Wang told reporters after the game, in which the Royals beat the Minnesota Twins 7-0 at the Ewing M. Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri.
The 36-year-old reliever was called up in the ninth inning, when the Royals were leading by seven.
Wang walked the first batter and dismissed three others, including Park Byung-ho of South Korea. Wang pitched a total of 22 balls, all sinkers, gaining 13 strikes and allowing no hits.
Facing Park, who hit a homer in his major league debut the previous day, Wang threw a sinker that was clocked at 148kph.
It was a strong comeback from last year, when Wang’s trademark sinker rarely clocked more than 143kph, but a stint at the Texas Baseball Ranch in the off-season helped him improve his speed.
Earlier, Ian Kennedy had pitched impressively into the seventh inning on his Kansas City debut as the Royals hit their first three home runs of the season.
The Twins fell to 0-5 for the first time since the Washington Senators moved to Minnesota in 1961.
Kennedy (1-0), signed by the Royals on a five-year US$70 million contract in January, limited the Twins to five hits — including four singles — before being pulled after 109 pitches with two out in the seventh. He walked one and struck out seven.
Mike Moustakas and Lorenzo Cain hit successive home runs in the fourth for the first hits off Twins left-hander Tommy Milone, while Kendrys Morales homered in the sixth off Casey Fien. The last time the Royals hit back-to-back home runs was on Sept. 29 last year at the Chicago White Sox.
Milone (0-1) allowed four runs — two earned — and four hits in 4-2/3 innings.
Twins shortstop Eduardo Escobar committed two errors — one fielding and one throwing — leading to the two unearned runs in the fifth inning.
Paulo Orlando, who was making his first start of the season, had three hits, including an RBI single in the three-run sixth inning, and scored on Alcides Escobar’s two-out triple.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification