The Brother Elephants' 3-1 series win over the previously red-hot Chinatrust Whales last week not only sent the marine creatures down to third place in the Chinese Professional Baseball League standings, it breathed new life back into the most popular baseball team in Taiwan.
After splitting the first two games of the series earlier last week, the Elephants edged past the Whales on Friday at Hsinchuang with a 3-2 win, led by center fielder Chen Huai-shan's two-run double to deep center-left in a three-run seventh inning that put the Elephants up 3-1 at that point.
Even though the Whales closed the gap to within a run in the ensuing inning on shortstop Cheng Chang-ming's RBI double, Elephants reliever Hsiao Ren-wen managed to hold his ground in a scoreless ninth to preserve the first win of the year for starter Nakagomi Sin.
Elephants 7, Whales 5
The Elephants lineup would spot American righty Harold Woodman a 6-0 lead after four innings of play before the Whales fought back with five unanswered runs off Woodman to make it 6-5 at the seventh-inning stretch in Saturday's contest.
In came 43-year-old veteran Liu Yi-chuan, whose two innings of scoreless relief delivered the Elephants the 7-5 triumph.
Offensively for the Elephants, designate hitter Chen "The Golden Warrior" Chih-yuan, cleanup man Peng "Chia Chia" Cheng-ming and Chen Huai-shan did most of the damage, going a combined 6-for-11 with three RBIs.
Bears 9, Cobras 9
Also on the move for the week were the La New Bears, who came within a run of a clean, three-game sweep of the Macoto Cobras to finish off the week with a 2-0-1 mark (1 tie).
Thursday's wild series opener at Hsinchuang featured five lead changes between the two former Taiwan Major League (TML) teams, as they combined to put up 18 runs on 30 hits before calling it quits in a 9-9 draw.
Bears 8, Cobras 3
Starter Cory Bailey was the biggest beneficiary of a Bears attack that scored in all but three innings.
The American righty allowed just three runs on the 10 hits for his second win of the season.
Cobras starter Hideki Sato allowed six runs (four earned) on eight hits over five frames in his third setback of the year.
Bears 4, Cobras 1
Sunday's series finale was a showdown between lefty aces Wu Si-yo of the Bears and the 2004 ERA king Lin Ying-jeh of the Cobras.
A shaky first inning that included a defensive error on first baseman Hsieh Jia-shien and a wild pitch by Lin would give the Bears a quick 2-0 lead, before the Cobras answered with a run in the bottom of the fourth.
That was the only run that the Cobras hitters could produce because Wu was simply magnificent in his return from a hip injury by tossing four-hit ball in 6-2/3 innings of work for his first win of the season.
A lack of run support once again hurt Lin Ying-jeh, now 1-2 for the season, in another quality start.
RSS