Whales edge the Elephants in nailbiter

Hsu Jen-chie of the Chinatrust Whales, right, steals the base as Chen Jui-chen of the Brother Elephants misses the ball in their CPBL game in Sinjhuang on Friday. PHOTO: LIU HSIN-DE, TAIPEI TIMES

Hiroshi Fujimoto's two-out single with the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth knocked in two runs for the Chinatrust Whales as they overcame a late-game deficit to beat the Brother Elephants 3-2 in Sinjhuang on Friday evening.

The win by the Whales not only evened their two-game set versus the Elephants at one win apiece, but also kept the Whales in pace with the league-leading Macoto Cobras, who also won on the night.

The classic pitchers' duel had the Whales jumping to a quick 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first when speedy outfielder Gee Jung-lin led off the game with a rare triple off Elephants starter Yeh Yong-jeh and scored two batters later on Kao Jung-chiang's RBI single.

The Elephants would promptly even things up at 1-all after a scoreless second on Chen Rei-cheng's run-scoring single that scored Liu Ghen-hsin, who singled to first and stole second before taking home on Chen lined a single to shallow-left for the equalizer.

The Chen-Liu connection would strike again in the top of the fifth for the Elephants when the former stretched a long double into a triple and scored on the latter's groundout to third on the ensuing play to give their team 2-1 lead.

Kept bay by the solid pitching of the Elephants' Yeh, the Whales' bats remained relatively quiet from the second inning on, until Hiroshi's clutch single in the eighth off reliever Chuang Wei-chuan rallied the marine creatures to a thrilling come-from-behind victory.

Whales Kao Jien-san booked in seven decent innings, allowing two runs on seven hits in his longest outing of the year. Even though his bid for a second win of the season came up an inning short, the quality start by the veteran starter meant great news for skipper Hsieh Chang-hehn, who is still in search of a reliable No. 3 starter on a rotation that has not shown the kind of consistency that he expected at the start of the season.

Reliever Luo Jien-ming was credited with the win for retiring the lone batter he faced that ended the Elephants' eighth, while lefty Nee Fu-deh picked up his first save of the year for recording the final out of the game, which came on a spectacular dive by Whales shortstop Cheng Chang-ming, who robbed the Elephants' Chen Huai-shan of a potential game-winning base hit on the game-ending out.

Taking loss for the Elephants was Liao Yu-cheng, who was responsible for the two runs that Hiroshi knocked in during the eighth for his first loss of the season.

Cobras 7, Bulls 5

The Macoto Cobras avenged a tough loss to the Sinon Bulls on Thursday with a 7-5 win in Taichung on Friday night to salvage a one-game series split with the Bulls.

Four runs by the Cobras offense against a wild Bulls starter Yu Wen-pin set the tone in the game as the Bulls found themselves playing catch-up throughout the entire contest.

Hsieh Ugly" Jia-shien's RBI single sparked a five-hit, top-of-the-first that plated four quick runs for the serpents before reliever Lee Guo-ching struck out two in a row to keep the Cobras from doing further damage.

The score remained 4-0 in favor of the Cobras with Lee throwing six shutout innings on two scattered singles, which allowed his Bulls to ring up three runs in the sixth to make it 4-3.

That was as close as the Bulls got as the Ugly belted a two-run double down the first base line to up the Cobras' lead back to three before the two teams traded another run each over the next inning in a 7-4 ball game.

Cheng Jau-han's crafty infield single that scored the runner on third off Cobras closer Travis Minix made things interesting in the bottom of the eighth, but the American righty was able to get out of the two-out, with-the-tying-run-on jam by getting the next batter to fly out to end the Bulls scoring threat.

Picking the win for the Cobras was starter Chang Hsien-chih, who allowed two runs on five hits in as many innings for his second win of the year.