Chang "Prince of the Forest" Tai-shan's (
The potent Bulls attack cooled off Bears rookie starter Wu Si-yo (
Starter Yang Jien-fu (
The second-year ace now has a record of 12-5 for the season, making him the only bright spot in a shaky rotation.
After a 9-3 series-opening loss on Wednesday, the Bulls fought back with an offensive explosion the next day in a 16-6 final, where they rang up 17 hits against five different Bears hurlers.
All but one Bulls starter had at least one hit in the game, which helped make a winner out of reliever Osvaldo Martinez.
Compared to the 22-run slugfest on Thursday that lasted over three and a-half hours, Friday's Game 3 took only two hours and six minutes to complete as the Bulls downed the Bears 2-1.
The classic pitchers' duel between the Bulls' Kuo Yung-chih (
Suffering from a rare lack of run support, Wright dropped to 2-4 for the year as he took the tough loss in the three-hit, complete-game effort.
Taking advantage of their newfound groove, the Brother Elephants won three of four in their series against the Chinatrust Whales to keep their playoff hopes alive.
The defending champs lost four straight games and seven of eight during a recent stretch that had the Elephants fans wondering if their beloved team would stumble in their quest for an unprecedented four titles in a row.
Other than the 18-3 blowout defeat at the hands of the Whales in Game 3 on Friday, the Elephants regained their unstoppable form with a combined scoring margin of 23-9 in their three victories.
Saturday afternoon's 11-5 win in Tienmu marked starter Jonathan Hurst's 15th for the year, giving the 38-year-old former Major Leaguer a three-game cushion over local aces Yang Jien fu of the Bulls and lefty Lin Ying-jeh (
Peng "Chia Chia" Cheng-ming's (彭政閔) two-run, opposite-field blast kept him in pace with Chang Tai-shan of the Bulls for the league lead in most homers with 16, as the slumping slugger connected for three hits in four at-bats to hold his average at .376.
The league-leading President Lions avenged their series-opening shutout loss to the Cobras with a pair of impressive wins to end the week 2-1.
Following their 5-0 loss to the serpents on Thursday that featured a season-high four errors by the Lions, the big cats regrouped and blanked the Cobras in Saturday's game in Hsinchuang.
Starter Pan "Du Du" Wei-luen (潘威倫) scattered four hits in seven scoreless innings before closer Michael Garcia took the mound with two innings of shutout relief work, giving him a league-leading 24 saves in 25 opportunities.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier