Peng "Chia Chia" Cheng-min's solo homer off La New starter Randy Leek sparked a four-run fourth as the Brother Elephants tamed the Bears by a 6-4 margin in Tianmu on Friday night to keep the Bears from making up any grounds on the league-leading Macoto Cobras in their pursuit for the first-half title.
With the homer, Peng's 16th of the season, the soft-spoken and always-smiling Elephants slugger set a new league record for fastest to hit 16 home runs in a season at 46 games and 165 at-bats, topping the previous mark of 52 games and 180 at-bats set by former Sinon Bulls great Jay Kirkpatrick in 1998.
The contest began with the visiting Bears jumping out in front 1-0 in the opening inning when Huang "Easy" Long-yi led off the game with a single off Elephants' starter Nick Bierbrodt, took second and third following a wild pitch and an ensuing groundout before reaching home on a balk by Bierbrodt.
PHOTO: CHU PEI-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The lead lasted less than an inning as the Elephants fought back with a pair of runs in the bottom of the second on Chen Rei-chang's sacrifice-fly to center and Liu Geng-hsun's RBI single to shallow-left to claim a 2-1 advantage.
A four-run fourth by the Elephants increased their lead to 6-1 before the Bears countered with three in the sixth to pull within two runs of the Brother at 6-4.
That was all the runs that either team would score as both bullpens did their job in stopping the opposing offenses from doing further damage.
Bierbrodt was credited with the win for allowing four runs on as many hits over 5-1/3 innings of work to beat Leek, who left too many pitches up and over the plate over the course of the 3-1/3 innings he pitched for his second loss of the season.
Lions 3, Bulls 2
Chang Chih-chiang tossed 5-2/3 effective innings of two-run ball and Tilson Brito homered for the 16th time this year to help the Lions edge past the Sinon Bulls 3-2 in Taichung on Friday evening.
It was Chang's first victory in nearly two years, as the normal bullpen workhorse for the Lions made the most of a rare starting assignment by taking a close game from the home Bulls.
The homer by Brito put the Dominican slugger in the record book for fastest to reach the 16-homer plateau in 200 plate appearance while tying Peng by achieving the feat in just 46 games as well.
Liu Fu-hao's sacrifice-fly to right got the Lions on the board in the top of the second before Pan Wu-hsiung drew a bases-loaded walk off Sinon starter Lee Guo-ching to make it 2-0 in favor of the Lions.
Then came Brito's thunderous swing leading off the top of the third that put his team 3-0 ahead.
The Bulls answered with two runs of their own in the bottom of the fifth, courtesy of Lin Tsung-nan's two-run blast to deep-center off Chang to make it 3-2 which was how the match finished.
Suffering the disheartening loss for the Bulls was Lee who was hurt by the five walks he issued in just 1-2/3 innings of work, even though he did not allow a single hit over the same span.
The Bulls actually outhit the Lions by a wide 8-3 margin in the game. But failure to come up with the timely hits ultimately cost them the win as they stranded a total of nine runners with four in scoring position.
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