Yang Jien-fu pitched seven strong innings of one-run ball and Chang "Prince of the Forest" Tai-shan drove in a pair of runs on a two-for-four night to lead the Sinon Bulls past the Chinatrust Whales in a narrow 3-2 home win in Taichung on Thursday evening.
The former ace of the Sinon staff, who had been bothered by a series of nagging injuries all season long, returned to his old form by hitting more than 140kph with his fastball and getting his nasty slider to break hard and late to keep the Whales hitters off balance.
"It's really coming around for me now; I am hitting the spots that I hadn't been hitting before and it's paying off," Yang said after the game.
The Prince collected his team-best 74th RBI of the year with a fifth-inning double that ended up being the game-winning run.
The contest began with the home Bulls taking it to Whales starter Shen Yu-jeh right away with a pair of RBI singles by Chang and Chen Chih-wei in the bottom of the first for a quick 2-0 lead.
The Bulls would up their lead by one in the fifth after three scoreless innings in a 3-0 game. The Whales finally got on the board in the sixth on Chen Yong-tseh's solo home run off Yang to make it 3-1.
Trailing by a deuce with the top of the order due up against Bulls ace closer Kuo Yong-chih in the ninth, the Whales managed to score once more on Hsu Ren-jeh's solo blast to left to make it 3-2. But that was as close as they got as Kuo quickly settled in to record the final three outs of the game to pocket his league-leading 13th save of the season.
Yang earned his fourth straight win in as many starts by scattering four hits over seven innings to improve to seven wins for the year.
Suffering the tough loss was Shen, who allowed three runs on eight hits in four-and-one-third innings of work and saw his seven-game winning streak came to a crashing end as his offense failed to give him the run support that he had been getting over the past two months.
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