Hsu Yu-wei tossed five-and-two-thirds innings of shutout ball to guide the La New Bears past the Macoto Cobras in a 5-1 triumph in Sinjhuang on Friday night to sweep the two-game set against their former Taiwan Major League rivals.
The win not only extended Hsu's winning streak to six straight to give the emerging Bears lefty seven wins this year, it it also increased the Bears win streak to four game to help the team keep pace with the league-leading President Lions.
Raul Gonzalez knocked in the first run of the game on a clean double before taking third on a wild relay throw and scoring the Bears' second run on a sacrifice fly to put his team ahead 2-0 in the top of the second.
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The lead would stand until the top of the seventh, when Huang Long-yi's RBI single to left made it 3-0. Huang's hit was followed by Chen Chin-fong's two-run double off Cobras reliever Jeremy Hill to blow the game open at 5-0.
The Cobras finally scored a run in the bottom of the eighth on back-to-back doubles by Lin "Wild Hog" Hong-yuan and Hsieh "the Ugly" Jia-shien to avoid a shutout.
And that was as close as they got with the Bears bullpen doing mop-up duties with relative ease to prevent the serpents from doing any further damage.
Picking up the win was Hsu, who improved to 7-2 with five-and-two-thirds scoreless innings of work on four hits while fanning four and walking three.
Pocketing the tough loss for the Cobras was starter Hsu Chu-jien, who pitched equally effectively with two allowed runs -- just one earned -- on four hits, five strikeouts and two walks. However, Hsu fell victim to a lack of run support to drop to 2-4 for the year.
The failure to come up with the timely hits continued to plague the Cobras offense for the second straight night as they scored only one run on seven hits. On Thursday, the Cobras pounded out 14 hits but still lost to the Bears.
"Anytime you have the kind of run-to-hit ratios like ours, it's darn near impossible to pull off a win," Cobras skipper Wu Fu-lien said.
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