Liu Jung-nan turned in his best effort of the season thus far with five-and-a-third innings of two-run relief as the Brother Elephants doubled up on the Macoto Cobras 4-2 in Tianmu on Saturday evening.
The right-hander, who entered the game one out into the top of the third in relief of an injured Joey Dawley, answered the challenge by three-hitting the league-leaders in his longest relief outing of this season to earn his first win.
Other than a shaky fourth inning, in which he allowed both of the Cobras runs on a bases-loaded walk to Deng Shih-yang and a sacrifice fly by Kao Wei, Liu was in complete control of his game until he was pulled during the eighth.
In came a well rested Chuang Wei-chuan, who promptly retired the final four batters in order for his third save of the season.
The Elephants wasted little time solving Cobras starter Chang Hsien-chih with two second-inning runs, including Chen Guan-ren's one-run double and Fong Sheng-shien's RBI groundout, which scored Chen Guan-ren one out later.
Leading 2-0, the Elephants would replicate their success with another pair of runs in the third for a comfortable 4-0 advantage.
The Cobras would cut the Elephants lead in half with two runs of their own off Liu in the top of the fourth and threaten to add more with men on first and second and only one out.
Liu worked out of a serious jam with minimal damage by striking out Chen Keh-fan for the second out of the inning before inducing a lazy fly to center to end the inning.
Chang was tagged with the loss for the serpents.
Offensively for the Elephants,Chen Rei-cheng, Chen Guan-ren, and Chen Huai-shan batted a combined 6-for-12 with three RBIs.
Lions 7, Whales 1
Scoring early and often, the President Lions erupted for seven runs in a surprising 7-1 win over the previously red-hot Chinatrust Whales in Tainan on Saturday night to snap a five-game losing skid in Tainan.
Averaging only 1.4 runs per game over the five games prior to Saturday, the Lions came into the game as heavy underdogs against Whales staff ace Tseng Jau-hao.
But that did not seem to bother the cats a bit as they scored at least one run in three of the first four innings against Tseng for a solid 4-1 lead before padding it by three in the seventh and eighth to blow the game wide open in the end.
Starter Rob Cordemans of the Netherlands was brilliant for the Lions with seven solid innings of one-run ball on six scattered singles.
Former European champions Celtic exited the UEFA Champions League in the qualifiers after a 3-2 penalty shoot-out defeat at Kazakhstan’s Kairat Almaty on Tuesday, following two goalless legs in the playoff tie. Kairat are to compete in the competition proper for the first time, while Norway’s Bodo/Glimt and Cyprus’s Pafos also secured debut appearances after coming through the playoffs. Celtic’s night ended in disappointment as they missed three penalties in the shoot-out, Daizen Maeda failing with the decisive spot-kick. The slugfest of a match went into extra-time with neither side finding the net and few overall chances, echoing the first
Rangers on Wednesday bowed out of the UEFA Champions League playoffs with a humiliating 6-0 defeat at the hands of Club Brugge which piles further pressure on head coach Russell Martin, while SL Benfica secured a place in the competition proper at the expense of Jose Mourinho’s Fenerbahce. The Glasgow giants traveled to Belgium right up against it after losing 3-1 at home in last week’s first leg, when they conceded three times in the opening 20 minutes. They never looked like turning the tie around as Club Brugge took the lead inside five minutes at the Jan Breydelstadion through Nicolo Tresoldi
Noah Lyles on Thursday warmed up for the upcoming athletics world championships by chasing down Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo to win the 200m at the Diamond League final. Lyles trailed Tebogo at the start, but gradually erased the deficit over the final 100m and pipped the Botswana sprinter to the line by centimeters. Lyles, the Olympic 100m champion and reigning world champion in both the 100m and 200m, clocked 19.74 seconds in a slight headwind. Tebogo was 0.02 seconds behind. It was Lyles’ sixth Diamond League title, a record for track athletes. “Six, that’s a big number,” Lyles said. “Shoot, that’s another record on
Australian Alex de Minaur reached the second week of the US Open for the third year in a row with little fanfare on Saturday and said he intended to keep winning until the tournament organizers were forced to give him better billing. Despite being the eighth seed and a quarter-finalist last year at Flushing Meadows, De Minaur’s third-round match against German Daniel Altmaier was scheduled for Court 17 — the smallest of the four stadium venues in the precinct. “It is a little bit of a headscratcher for me. I’m not gonna lie,” he told reporters after progressing 6-7 (9/7), 6-3, 6-4,
RSS