Sinon Bulls kept their first-half title hunt alive with back-to-back wins over the La New Bears last weekend in Kaohsiung. Down by three-and-a-half games, the Bulls can still win the title with four straight victories this week: A makeup game against the Elephants at home in Taichung yesterday and a three-game sweep of the league-leading President Lions later in the week.
After dropping their series opener against the Bears in an 11-2 slaughter on Thursday, the Bulls bounced back and beat the Bears convincingly by a 9-4 final on Saturday, before Sunday night's 3-0 shutout.
Four hits in the top of the first, capped by designated hitter Chen Tsung-fu's (陳宗甫) two-run single, gave the Bulls an early 4-0 lead in Saturday's contest. Starter Yu Wen-bin nearly blew the lead by allowing three Bear runs in the next two innings to keep the game close. The Bulls would add to their 4-3 lead in the sixth with catcher Shih Jau-tung's (施昭同) just-fair liner that brought home both runners before putting the game away in the eighth on another RBI single by Shih and leftfielder Kao Jien-lung (高健龍).
Yu Wen-bin earned his first win of the year by allowing four runs (one earned) on seven hits in 5-1/3 innings of work, thanks to 3-2/3 innings of shutout relief by set-up man Ho Chi-shien (何紀賢) and closer Osvaldo Martinez.
Short stop Cheng Jau-hang's (鄭兆行) solo blast off the left foul pole gave the Bulls the lead for good in Sunday's series finale. Starter Kuo Yung-chih (郭勇志) surrendered only three hits in 6-1/3 scoreless frames before Martinez finished off strong in one-hitting the Bears over the final 2-2/3 innings of play.
Bear starter Iriki Satoshi fell victim to no-run support in the rough loss, even though his three-run, nine-hit outing would have won the game with a reasonable run support from his offense.
Playing in their league-leading form, the Lions forced a 2-2 tie in their four-game series against the Macoto Cobras by winning Games 3 and 4 over the weekend.
Cobra lefty ace Lin Ying-jeh (林英傑) could not overcome the three early runs he allowed (all of which were unearned) as a result of a costly throwing error by third baseman Deng Shih-yang (鄧蒔陽) in the Lions' 5-3 triumph. Lin did manage to fan eight Lion batters over seven frustrating innings in the losing effort to break the century mark for most strikeouts in a half-season by a local pitcher. The previous mark of 97, held by Huang Ping-yang (黃平洋) of the former Weichuan Dragons in 1993 had stood for 11 years. Lin's 105 K's with a scheduled start left has him eying the all-time league mark of 119 set by Enrique Burgos of the Lions in 1990.
Picking up where they left off, the Lions cruised to a 7-2 fifth inning lead en route to Sunday's 13-3 trouncing of the hapless serpents. Starter Pan Wei-luen (
Offensively for the big cats, rookie first baseman Kao Kuo-ching's (
The Elephants' road to the first-half title took two undesirable turns as they lost two in a row to the Chinatrust Whales to fall two games behind the Lions.
Relief pitching continued to haunt the defending champs in the 8-5 loss as Wang Jing-li (
Starter Kao Jien-san (
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