Unstable weather brought by Typhoon Kaemi meant Games 1 and 2 of the four-game series between the Brother Elephants and the President Lions were postponed earlier this week, leaving the Sinon Bulls versus the Chinatrust Whales contest on Tuesday and Wednesday's match between the La New Bears and the Macoto Cobras as the only action for the week in the Chinese Professional Baseball League thus far.
Wednesday night's highly anticipated showdown in Sinjhuang between the Bears' Kenny Rayborn and the Cobras' Lin "Little Chick" En-yu, the league's two premier hurlers with 24 wins between them (Rayborn's 13 and Lin's 11), never materialized as Lin was scratched from the lineup prior to the game due to a pinched nerve in his neck.
Lin's last-minute absence left Macoto manager Wu Fu-lien to call on rookie right-hander Chang Hsien-chih as his emergency starter for the game, in which Chang pitched well but still lost to the league-leading Bears by a final of 5-0 due to a lack of run support.
PHOTO: WANG CHUN-FENG, TAIPEI TIMES
Despite the late notice, Chang was actually equal to the task with two perfect innings of work before allowing the first Bears run to cross the plate in the top of the third inning on an RBI double by La New outfielder Tseng Hao-jui.
The Bears would up their lead to 2-0 in the fourth with Lu Jung-hsiung's two-out double down the leftfield line that scored Pan Chung-wei all the way from first base, before blowing the game wide open in the eighth with three more runs off Cobras reliever Felix Villegas on four singles and a pair of walks to run away with the shutout win.
Rayborn was credited with his league-leading 13th win of the season in the shutout, even though he allowed five hits and three walks over six innings, four of which saw Macoto put runners in scoring position.
Offensively for the Bears, Tseng's 3-for-3 night with a pair of RBIs earned him his first game-MVP honor of the year. All three of his hits were doubles.
Bulls 3, Whales 2
Huang Chung-yi's opposite-field single with man on second scored the go-ahead run for the Bulls in the bottom of the fifth, as they went on to triumph in this sloppily played game in Taichung by a narrow margin of 3-2 on Tuesday evening.
Two costly errors by the Sinon defense led to an unearned run in each of the first innings to spot the Whales an early 2-0 advantage.
But the marine creatures would quickly return the favor in the bottom of the second when three walks issued by starter Alexander Herrera of Venezuela and an error by first baseman Chen Jien-wei helped the Bulls even things up at 2-all.
The score remained at 2-2 until Huang's clutch hit in the fifth with neither offense able to come through with any runs during the third and fourth inning, despite having runners in scoring position.
Sinon starter Alfredo Gonzalez pitched out of a couple of jams in the fourth and fifth with seven innings of solid effort to record his ninth win of the year.
The Dominican righty allowed two runs, both unearned, on five scattered singles, while fanning a season-high of eight Whales batters in the game.
Bullpen specialist Kuo Yong-chih also chipped in two innings of perfect relief to help his club in a winning cause for his eighth save of the year.
Pocketing the loss in a wild start was Herrera, who walked a season-high of eight Bulls (he also struck out eight) to further damage his already-shaky status on the Chinatrust rotation.
1-for-10 hitting with men in scoring position left the Whales' empty-handed on numerous scoring opportunities as they fell short by a run for the tenth time this season.
"Not having a reliable RBI guy in our lineup really makes it extra hard to win in this game," Chinatrust skipper Lee Lai-fa said after the game, referring to his team's longstanding problem in a lack of run production.
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