Whale crush Bulls while Luka's season ends badly

COURTESY CPBL

A grand slam by the Chinatrust Whales' Chen Chien-wei (陳健偉) on the top of the third off Sinon Bulls starter Tsai Chung-nan (蔡仲南) lifted the Whales from 1-0 down as Hung Chee-feng (洪啟峰) launched back-to-back home runs to lead the Bulls 5-1 to a huge victory last night in Taichung.

Whales' starter Sung Chao-chee (宋肇基) pitched seven strong innings while giving up three runs and registered his 15th win of the season to tie with Jonathan Hurst of the Brother Elephants on the winning chart.

Bulls starter Tsai lasted less than three innings as he allowed two home runs and gave up five earned runs to suffer his ninth loss of the season.

The Whales displayed their powerful offense by launching a total of six long balls with two sets of back-to-back homeruns that scored twelve runs in the course of nine innings.

The Bulls only managed to score one run each in the second, third and the seventh inning while starter Sung was on the mound.

Later the Bulls scored three times at the bottom of the ninth to make the score 12-6.

COURTESY TML

It was not pretty, but Taichung Agan got the job done in its regular season finale against Chiayi Luka with a 2-0 shutout victory.

The win essentially ended all hopes for the home-side Luka to be in the postseason because they cannot end up with a better record than Taipei Gida regardless of the outcome of the Gida's two remaining regular season games against the Kaohsiung Fala this weekend.

Agan starter Muto Koji ended the Agan regular season on a high note as he baffled a desperate Luka lineup all night, yielding six harmless hits over the course of the complete-game shutout.

His impressive outting earned him the game MVP honors.

Luka starter Yang Shih-chen (楊世丞) fell victim to an ineffective offensive effort by his fellow hitters, as he took the tough loss.

Yang held an Agan lineup that featured three of the top five hitters in the league to just two runs in seven-plus innings of play.

The game-winning hit came from an unlikely hero, Huang Kao-jun, (黃高俊) who is known more for his blazing speed on the base paths, rather than his bat.

Huang leads the league in most stolen bases for the season with 41. The Agan victory should be considered a nice finishing touch to an incredible regular-season run, as they dominated their opponents throughout the season, finishing by more than 15 games ahead of the seoncd-placed Fala.

The Agan will return to Taichung and wait for the winner of the first round of playoffs, a best-of-five series between the Kaohsiung Fala and the Taipei Gida.