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Foreign starters hit the spot

American lefty Brian Rodaway delivers a pitch for the Brother Elephants in Wednesday's 5-1 win over the Sinon Bulls. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BROTHER ELEPHANTS

The Sinon Bulls split the first two games of this week's four-game series against the Brother Elephants in a pair of 5-1 decisions earlier this week that featured solid efforts from two foreign starters.

Tuesday night's contest at Sinjhuang was all Clint Weibl as the American righty led the Bulls to a 5-1 victory in another quality start after last week's two-hitter (in a no-decision) for his first win in Taiwan.

After allowing a leadoff home run to the Elephants' Liu Keng-hsin and two more base hits to start off the game down 0-1, Weibl quickly settled down and struck out the next two batters before getting Chen Huai-shan to fly out at right to end the first inning.

The Bulls would even things up in the bottom of the third on a sacrifice-fly to right by Tseng Hua-wei before claiming their first lead of the game in the fourth on back-to-back doubles by Lin Tsung-nan and Ye Jung-chang off Brother starter Yofu Tetsu for a 2-1 lead.

Sinon finally chased Yofu in the fifth with three more runs on the strength of two singles, a walk issued by Yofu, and a wild throw on a put-out attempt by the Japanese veteran, to open a comfortable 5-1 lead that would stand until the end of the game.

Weibl ended the night pitching eight innings of one-run ball on seven hits. He fanned nine and walked one to up his strikeout total to 15 over two games thus far. Yofu took the loss in a shaky performance where he allowed all five of the Sinon runs on 10 hits to drop to 1-1 for the season.

Offensively for the Bulls, three different players had multi-hit games, highlighted by cleanup man Chang "Prince of the Forest" Tai-shan's 2-for-4 night with an RBI.

Elephants 5, Bulls 1

The Elephants returned the favor in an identical score on Wednesday at Hsinchu with four 10th-inning runs to break open a 1-1 tie for a 5-1 triumph.

Chen Huai-shan's two-run single off the Bulls' Yang Jien-fu capped an ugly 10th that saw the Bulls self-destructed with two errors and a pair of walks that helped the Bulls load the bases up twice in the inning.

Shortstop Chen Rei-cheng's fielding error on a routine grounder followed by third baseman Wang Jin-yong's throwing error put Bulls runners at the corners without hitting the ball out of the infield, making reliever Yu Wen-pin's job to keep the game close literally impossible.

The classic pitchers' duel between the Elephants' Brian Rodaway and the Bulls' Jorge Cortez had both starters keeping the opposing offenses at bay with Rodaway outshining Cortez slightly on a four-hit gem with eight strikeouts over eight frames.

Designated hitter Huang Chung-yi got the Bulls on the board with a sacrifice fly off Rodaway in the sixth for a 1-0 lead before the Elephants answered an inning later on Wang's bouncing single to third to force a 1-1 tie.

Brother reliever Blas Cedeno was credited with the win for pitching a scoreless ninth and 10th, dealing the loss to his counterpart Yu, who surrendered three of the four Elephants runs in the 10th, all unearned.

Lions 6, Cobras 2

Pan "Du Du" Wei-luen picked up his second win of the season with seven strong innings of play as the President Lions beat the Macoto Cobras 6-2 in their home opener at Tainan on Wednesday.

The staff ace allowed two runs (one earned) on five hits against a previously red-hot Macoto lineup that had averaged six runs per game in their three wins over the Bulls last week, en route to another outstanding effort off the mound.

Doing the damage offensively for the big cats was outfielder Yang Song-shuen, whose 3-for-4 night led an attack that collected a dozen hits off three Cobras hurlers.

Bears 11, Whales 4

Wang Chih-chiang's grand slam off Chinatrust starter Rafael Garcia capped a seven-run third that sent twelve batter to the plate as the La New Bears handled the Whales easily in an 11-4 win at Sinjhuang on Wednesday night.

Gustavo Martinez was the beneficiary of an efficient Bears offense that produced eleven runs on as many hits against four different Whales pitchers as the Dominican righty picked up his first win of the season.
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