Osvaldo Martinez silenced the President Lions' bats and the 11,000-plus hostile Tainan crowd with 6-2/3 innings of near-flawless pitching as the Sinon Bulls won Game 2 of the Taiwan Series by a final score of 3-1 on Sunday night.
The road win gave the Bulls a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven championship series against the first half champions and set what many had thought to be the closest postseason matchup play in league history into a potential blowout heading into tonight's Game 3 in Taichung, where over 15,000 rowdy Bulls' fans await the hapless Lions.
Despite his mediocre regular season record against the big cats (1-2 with a 6.10 ERA in two starts and seven relief appearances), Martinez took his game to another level by four-hitting the Lions with six strikeouts in 6-2/3 frames of work.
Except for Lions' third baseman Wu Jia-rong (
He would have had the shutout if it were not for a pitch that sailed wide in the bottom of the first which scored the runner from third for the Lions' only run of the game.
Equally stunning compared to Martinez's lead act was Bulls reliever Jeff Andra's 2-1/3 innings of perfect relief.
The American righty followed his two innings of hitless relief in Game 1 with another spectacular outing by retiring all seven batters he faced for his second straight save in as many games.
Lions' brief lead
Taking advantage of Martinez's first-inning wild pitch, the Lions actually took an early 1-0 lead until the top of the fourth, when Bulls' designated hitter Tseng Hua-wei (曾華偉) knotted the game up at 1-1 with a sharp grounder that shot through the left gap of a drawn-in Lions' infield to score the runner from third.
Cleanup man Chang "Prince of the Forest" Tai-shan (
With his three hits in the game, Chang took over the top spot in most career championship series hits with 44 and counting, surpassing Lions' designated hitter Luo Ming-ching's (
Luo will probably need to play a whale of a game in the remaining contests of the series if he wishes to retake the record from Chang, since the Lions' all-time "hitting king" will retire after this season.
Right-hander Pan "Du Du" Wei-luen (
"Pan definitely pitched well enough to win; I am not too concerned with our pitching," Lions skipper Hsieh Chang-hern (
The former Lions' pitching icon, who led the Lions to four titles in his playing days during the 1990s, will try to rally his troops for Game 3.
Only one team has been able to overcome a 0-2 series deficit to win the title in the 11 championship series thus far.
In a year that is filled with broken curses and history-defying plays, the Lions may be the club that will prove history wrong.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
HSIEH MAKES QUARTERS: Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Elise Mertens of Belgium won in the women’s doubles and face Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Sofia Kenin of the US Top-ranked Iga Swiatek and US Open champion Coco Gauff were knocked out of the women’s singles at the Miami Open on Monday, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced in the women’s doubles. Swiatek lost to Ekaterina Alexandrova 6-4, 6-2, hours after third seed Gauff fell in three sets to No. 23 Caroline Garcia 6-3, 1-6, 6-2. Alexandrova beat a top-ranked player for the first time and advanced to face Jessica Pegula, a 7-6 (7/1), 6-3 winner over Emma Navarro, in the quarter-finals. Alexandrova recorded her second win over Swiatek, following a 2021 victory in Melbourne. Swiatek had won their three matches since. “We played quite