CPBL ROUNDUP
A pair of home runs by Chen Jia-hong helped the Chinatrust Whales beat the Brother Elephants 10-2 in Tienmu Saturday night for the Whales' first victory of Taiwan's Chinese Professional Baseball League season.
The third-year third baseman out of the National Taiwan College of Physical Education blasted two solo shots, both off Elephants starter Chuang Hong-liang, on a 2-for-4 night with three RBIs in the Whales' lone victory of the four-game series.
The Elephants got on the board first in the bottom of the first on Chen Guan-ren's grounder to short that scored the runner from third.
It was all Whales from that point on as they hammered the Elephants' Chuang Hong-liang and reliever Pei-chuan for nine runs over the next six innings to build a commanding 9-1 advantage.
Whales starter Kao Jien-san allowed a run on six hits in 5-1/3 innings of work, dodging a big bullet in the third when he managed to work out of a one-out, bases-loaded jam by getting Hsu Ming-lan to pop out and Chen Huai-shan to ground into an inning-ending fielder's choice.
Offensively for the Whales, six of their 10 hits were for extra bases. Clutch hitting, going 5-for-10 with men in scoring position, resulted in a win.
Whales 3, Elephants 3
Poor late-innings relief finally cost the Elephants a win as the Whales rallied for two runs in the top of the ninth to force a 3-3 tie in Game 1 of Saturday's doubleheader in Tienmu.
Shaky late-game relief first surfaced on Friday night for the Elephants when they nearly blew a 6-1, ninth-inning lead by squandering four runs in the ninth to beat the Whales by a 6-5 margin.
After the Whales jumped to a 1-0 advantage in the top of the fourth on the strength of outfielder Huang Kwei-yu's solo blast to deep-left off Elephants starter Liu Jung-nan, the Elephants promptly answered in the bottom of the fifth when Chen Huai-shan's sacrifice fly brought home Hsu Ming-lan from third to make it 1-all.
Chen "Golden Warrior" Chih-yuan helped the Elephants reclaim a 3-1 lead in the eighth with a two-run homer off Whales starter Du Chang-wei, only to see Liu give a run right back on consecutive base hits in the ninth before closer Blas Cedeno yielded a game-tying single to the Whales' Kuo Dai-chi.
Bears 3, Lions 2
Chen Chin-fong hit a two-run home run and Lin Chih-sheng added an RBI single to account for all the scorings in the La New Bears' 3-2 win over the President Lions at Kaohsiung on Saturday.
With the game tied at 2-2, Lin Chih-sheng slapped a two-out blooper single off Lions reliever Lin Cheng-fong to shallow-right that dropped for a base hit in the bottom of the seventh to score the go-ahead run for the home Bears.
Reliever extraordinaire Hsu Chih-hua picked up his second win of the season by tossing four innings of one-hit ball, outshining starter Wu Si-yo, whose return from a season-ending injury last season appeared promising in his first start this year.
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