Homers lit up the Sinjhuang sky on Saturday night as the Macoto Cobras teed off on the Brother Elephants pitchers with four towering blasts en route to a 16-2 blowout victory.
Ivanon Coffie and Lin "Wild Hog" Hong-yuan each hit a pair of home runs on a combined 4-for-9 hitting with nine RBIs for the league-leaders to account for more than half of the run production in the slugfest.
Despite the whopping 16-2 margin of victory for the Cobras, it was actually the Elephants who struck first in the top of the second when back-to-back two-out doubles by Chen Guan-ren and Wang Jin-yong gave the visitors an early 1-0 advantage.
That was all the offense that the Elephants would muster over the next six innings while the Cobras hitters went to work against five different Brother hurlers by scoring at least two runs in six of the next eight innings to make this one a laugher long before the final out.
Coffie's two-run blast off Elephants starter Nick Bierbrodt in the second immediately put his team back on top before the "Wild Hog" crushed another offering from Bierbrodt the next inning for a two-run shot over the left-center wall.
After the Cobras tacked on two more runs in the fourth it was Coffie again who went deep against the Elephants' Liu Jung-nan in the fifth for his second two-run homer of the game to make it 8-1.
The Cobras piled on six more in the sixth, highlighted by the "Wild Hog"'s three-run blast off Liu to put the game away.
Picking up the easy win for the Cobras was starter Chang Hsien-chih who improved to 6-4 for the year, allowing two runs on seven hits while punching out four and walking one.
Suffering the loss was Bierbrodt who dropped to 2-4 for the season and was pulled from the Elephants roster to make room for fellow American right-hander Todd Moser.
Bears 4, Whales 2
The La New Bears doubled up on the Chinatrust Whales in a 4-2 decision in Tienmu on Saturday evening for their second win of the week, thanks to a three-run fifth that gave the Bears a 4-0 lead after five innings of play.
Chen Chin-fong led off the top of the second with a single and scored on Jiang Chih-tsong's RBI groundout two innings three batters later to give the defending champs a 1-0 lead.
After two scoreless innings, the Bears tacked on three more runs in the fifth on the strength of three singles and a pair of Whales errors that made all three runs unearned.
Down 0-4, the Whales finally got on the board against the outstanding pitching of Bears reliever Hsu Wen-hsiung who entered in relief of starter Gary Rath without much warning, on a sacrifice-fly by Tseng Han-chou.
Wang Yi-min's RBI single off La New's Randy Leek in the bottom of the seventh knocked in the Whales' second run of the game, but that was as close as they got as Tsai Ying-fong closed out the deal for the Bears by shutting out the Whales in the final two innings to preserve the win.
Hsu was credited with the victory for his outstanding 4-2/3 innings of one-run relief on five hits, three strikeouts, and a walk. He is now 4-4 for the season with a chance to move back into the starting rotation.
Taking the loss for the Whales was starter Tseng Jau-hao who lasted less than two innings as he was pulled just one out into the second because of discomfort in his throwing shoulder.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
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