Pan "Du Du" Wei-luen pitched six innings of one-run ball and Tilson Brito went 3-for-5 with his 14th homer of the year to lead the President Lions past the previously red-hot Sinon Bulls in a 6-1 victory at Hualien on Sunday night.
The win, Du Du's ninth straight after starting off the year with a pair of losses, marked the Lions staff ace's 60th in five seasons, making him the youngest pitcher to reach the milestone.
With 10 or more wins to his credit in all four seasons of his professional career thus far and already nine wins under his belt this year, Pan is a victory shy of becoming the first-ever pitcher to record double-digit wins in five straight years, setting a new standard for consistency in the league.
The contest began with the Lions drawing first blood in the top of the second when back-to-back run-scoring doubles by Liu Fu-hao and Kao Chih-kang quickly put the Lions ahead 3-0 against Bulls starter Yang Jien-fu.
Brito's solo blast to deep-left leading off the top of the third then made it 4-0 in favor of the cats as Pan cruised through the first five scoreless frames on only two scattered singles.
The Bulls finally broke their scoring drought in the sixth against Pan on three consecutive two-out singles to make it 4-1, but that was as close as they would get as the Lions answered with a two-run seventh to put the game away.
Soreness in his pitching shoulder kept Pan from taking the mound in the seventh, but that did not matter as three hurlers from the Lions bullpen combined for three innings of shutout relief to keep the Bulls hitters at bay the rest of the way.
The loss by the Bulls snapped a five-game winning streak. They trail the second-place La New Bears by a half-game and the league-leading Macoto Cobras by two games in the first-half title race.
Whales 12, Elephants 2
Scoring early and often, the Chinatrust Whales topped the Brother Elephants by a 12-2 final in Tianmu on Sunday evening to end a recent eight-game losing skid.
Five different Whales players had multi-hit games on the night, with three rapping out three hits each in the game to help their club break out of a recent slump.
A pair of defensive errors by the Elephants, coupled with two base hits and a walk, jump-started the Whales offense in a four-run second before the marine creatures tacked on another run in the fourth to lead it 5-0 after four innings of play.
The Elephants managed to score their first run off Whales starter Chu Wei-ming in the fifth on Fong Sheng-shien's RBI groundout, only to see the Whales respond with seven more runs over the next three innings to blow the game open.
Kao Jung-chiang's three-run home run off Elephants reliever Chuang Pei-chuan in the eighth was the icing on the cake as the Whales erupted for more than 10 runs for just the second time this year.
Picking up the win for the victorious Whales with five innings of one-run ball on four hits was Chu, whose brief stint with a Whales minor league team to tweak on his pitching mechanics seemed to pay immediate dividends as he improved to 3-1 for the season.
Elephants starter Yeh Yong-jeh, took the loss, lasting less than four innings and giving up five runs (all unearned) and as many hits for his second loss of the year. The second-year submariner is now 3-2 for the year.
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