Chen Huai-shan's timely single with runners at the corners scored the go-ahead run for the Brother Elephants in the bottom of the seventh as they held on to edge the La New Bears in a 5-4 decision in Sinjhuang on Saturday night.
The loss by the Bears coupled with a President Lions victory over the Macoto Cobras in Luodong unlocked a tie between the Bears and the Lions for the top spot in the league standings as the Bears dropped a full game back behind the Lions in a heated race for the second-half title.
The seesaw battle between the two teams that featured three lead changes saw the Bears jumping ahead 1-0 in the top of the second with Lin Jin-ping's opposite-field single that scored Chen Chin-fong, who led off the inning with a walk.
The Bears would double their lead in the fourth on Shih Yen-wei's pinch-hit RBI single before the Elephants answered with a run of their own in the bottom of the same inning on Wang Jin-yong's liner up the middle to make it 2-1 in favor of the Bears.
Peng "Chia Chia" Cheng-min's run-scoring double sparked what ended up being a three-run sixth for the Elephants that gave them their first lead in the game at 4-2 only to see the Bears rallied with Raul Gonzalez's two-run single that tied things up at 4-all in the top of the seventh, setting the stage for Chen's game-winning hit.
Todd Moser ran away with his fourth win of the year despite allowing the two-run single to Gonzalez in a blown save situation with three innings of relief.
Picking up the loss was Lee Fong-hua who allowed the winning run to reach on an infield single before the he was pulled.
It was the normally dependable Bears setup man's first loss of the season as he dropped to a 3-1 mark.
Lions 17, Cobras 12
Sub-par pitching by both staffs led to 42 combined hits in a slugfest between the President Lions and the Macoto Cobras in which the Lions won by a 17-12 margin in Luodong on Saturday for their fourth win in five games.
A nine-run second by the road cats turned a 0-2 deficit into a 9-2 lead and they never looked back en route to the huge win that helped them reclaim sole possession of the lead in the standings.
Thirteen Lions hitters made it to the plate against two different Cobras hurlers with six straight hits at one point in the fatal second that completely demolished the Cobras' confidence.
Even though they would score the game's final six runs over the last three innings to make the final score more respectable, the game was long over as the Lions took a commanding 17-6 lead after five innings of play.
Six different hitters had multi-hit games for each team on the night, led by game MVP Yang Seng of the Lions with a perfect 4-for-4 effort with a homer and three RBIs.
The third-year Lions infielder has racked up 11 RBIs over the past five contests to become the Lions' most productive hitter.
Earning the win in his first game with the Lions was starter Nelson Figueroa of the US, who allowed six runs (three earned) on 11 hits in five innings to beat the Cobras' Carlos Castillo who served up all nine runs in a dreadful second for his third setback of the year.
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