Outplayed by the Chiba Lotte Marines in every aspect of the game, the Sinon Bulls lost 12-1 at the Tokyo Dome during first round action of the 2005 Konami Cup Asia Series on Friday.
The loss gave the Chinese Professional Baseball League champions a 1-1 record in the event, with a game against the Samsung Lions (South Korean champions) scheduled for last night.
The victor will advance to face the Marines in tonight's championship game, with the winner taking home the ?50 million (NT$15 million) first-place prize money.
RECAP
The Marines, led by former New York Mets manager Bobby Valentine, wasted no time against starter Yang Jien-fu of the Bulls by plating their first run in the opening inning on third baseman Toshiaki Imae's sacrifice fly that scored leadoff man Tsuyoshi Nishioka from third.
Nishioka had reached first on a leadoff walk and made it all the way to third after he successfully stole second and advanced to third on a wild throw by Bulls catcher Yeh Jung-chang on the same play.
Up by a run, the Nippon Series champions added to their lead by two in the second on outfielder Akira Otsuka's two-run double for a 3-0 advantage.
After Yang managed to cool off the Marines' bats with scoreless third and fourth innings that included four strikeouts in a row, the Marines struck again in a three-run fifth, capped by cleanup man Saburo Omura's two-run double off the right-field wall to build a comfortable 6-0 cushion.
NO RELIEF
Reliever Kuo Yong-chih took the mound for the Bulls to start the sixth and quickly found himself in a world of trouble as he surrendered a solo homer to the Marines' Benny Agbayani before letting the flood gate open in a five-run seventh, highlighted by Agbayani's monstrous three-run blast to straight-away center.
Starter Naoyuki Shimizu was magnificent in picking up the impressive victory for the Marines, pitching seven innings of four-hit ball with 11 strikeouts.
The 10-game winner during the regular season retired the first 10 Bulls he faced before yielding a single to Bulls right fielder Yu Shien-ming in the bottom of the fourth.
Shimizu took a shutout bid two outs into the sixth before yielding an RBI-single to Chang Jien-ming for the Bulls' lone run of the game. Suffering the lopsided loss was Yang in a decent outing, considering the strength of his opponents. Four of the six runs that he allowed over the five innings of play were unearned, largely due to a disappointing defense that committed two crucial errors in addition to several other miscues that were not scored an official error, but were equally devastating nonetheless.
Offensively for the Marines, four different players had muiti-RBI nights, led by Agbayani's four and two each from Omura, Otsuka, and South Korean native Lee Seung-yeop.
"It was quite a learning experience for us, despite the loss," Sinon manager Liu Rong-hua said after the game according to the local Chinese-language media.
"It's a privilege to be able to compete against the Nippon Series champions ...we can clearly see that there still exists a big gap in the level of play in professional baseball between Taiwan and Japan."
Marines 3, China 1
Benny Agbayani doubled in a pair of runs in the bottom of the fifth inning yesterday, leading the Chiba Lotte Marines to a 3-1 win over China in the Konami Cup baseball tournament.
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