Lions roar as La New Bears suffer 3-0 shutout

Pan "Du Du" Wei-luen pitched five innings of no-hit ball and Kao Guo-ching drove in a pair of runs with a bases-clearing double to lead the President Lions past the La New Bears in a 3-0 shutout at Pingdong on Friday evening.

The staff ace for the Lions has won six straight after starting off the season with a 0-2 mark to lead the league in total victories. If it had not been for the stiffness in his right shoulder that forced Pan out of the game after the fifth in a no-hit bid, he probably could have gone the distance for the Lions.

That would not matter much for Lions manager Luo Guo-chang because Rob Cordemans was equally effective in a rare relief appearance by holding a potent Bears lineup to two scattered singles over four brilliant innings to keep the shutout intact.

The classic pitchers' duel saw the Lions draw first blood in the top of the second on Lui Fu-hao's RBI groundout off Bears starter Luis Martinez.

That was all the runs that either team would score until Kao's clutch double in the sixth with men on first and second that made it 3-0 in favor of the Lions before they held on for the eventual win.

Cobras 9, Whales 8

Deng Shih-yang's timely three-run homer in the bottom of the eighth rallied the Macoto Cobras from a three-run deficit before Chiou Chang-rong's two-out double scored the winning run in the tenth in a 9-8 win over the Chinatrust Whales at Sinjhuang on Friday night.

Five first-inning runs by the Cobras offense roughed up the Whales in what appeared to be an all-Macoto contest. But that was not the case as the Whales chipped away at the deficit by scoring a run in the third and the fourth before actually claiming a 7-5 lead with four runs in the fifth, highlighted by Kuo Dai-yong's two-run single off Cobras reliever Lee Ming-jin.

They scored one more run in the sixth to lead the Cobras 8-5, setting the stage for Deng's late-game heroics.

Travis Minix was credited with his third win of the season with three innings of one-hit relief to beat his counterpart Du Chang-wei, who served up Chiou's game-winner in the tenth.

The Whales actually outhit the Cobras 12-to-10 in the game, but suffered after another late-innings collapse by the struggling Whales bullpen which had blown four saves in its last six chances.

The win for the Cobras upped their lead over the second-placed Bears to two and a half games in the latest standings while the loss by the Whales set them four games behind the Cobras in fourth place.

As for the Dinos, point guard Chen Chih-chung's team-high 15 points was the lone bright spot on a night when not much went right for them.