More than 20,000 eager fans are expected to pack the Kaohsiung County Baseball Stadium this afternoon for the 2007 Taiwan Series opener, in which defending champs the La New Bears will take on the President Lions in a showdown for the holy grail of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL).
This year's annual Fall Classic will feature a potent Lions attack that stormed its way through the regular season with a league-best 625 total runs and long ball threats from Tilson Brito and Kao Guo-ching, whose 53 combined homers during the regular season was 11 more than the next-best hitting duo in the league.
If momentum means anything in this game, the Lions' lopsided three-game sweep of the Macoto Cobras in last week's Playoff Series should provide them with a big boost as they roughed up a Cobras staff with 36 runs over a three-game span to put themselves in position to avenge last year's embarrassing sweep by the Bears in this year's rematch.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE PRESIDENT LIONS
Facing the tenacious Lions hitters will be a La New rotation anchored by lefties Hsu Yu-wei and Andrew Loraine, as well as former closer Huang Jung-chung, who was bumped up into the starting rotation over the final stretch of the season with the arrival of Japanese veteran Suzuki Macoto to assume the closer's role.
The all-important Game 1 of this year's Fall Classic will see the home Bears send Huang to the mound to take on the Lions' Nelson Figueroa, who jumpstarted the Lions postseason with a big 9-4 win over the Cobras in the opener of the Playoff Series last Saturday.
While Figueroa may enjoy a slight edge in this game with a perfect 5-0 record in five starts since joining the Lions in the middle of last month, it was Huang who shut down the Lions in their regular-season finale with an impressive 4-1 victory on the road that gave his team a bye in the first round of postseason play.
"This could be the closest Taiwan Series that we've seen in years, with both clubs really peaking at the right time," said a league source who wished to remain anonymous.
While many may favor the Lions in this series for their superior offense, some would actually pick the Bears in the best-of-seven play for their big-game surge as they took two out of three during the final three-game set in the regular season between the two clubs.
Regardless of the advantage that either team may realize prior to the first pitch, the series will hinge on how effective the Bears pitching staff will be against a Lions lineup that can blow a game wide open at any time.
With the Bears short of a reliable No. 4 starter, mid-inning relief is a critical factor for manager Hung Yi-chung, who will try to get at least six innings out of his starters in every game to minimize the burden on his bullpen. Tsai Ying-fong and Lee Fong-hua are likely to pick up the bulk of the load before they can turn the game over to Suzuki in the ninth.
As for the Lions pitching, a staff that has the league's top two winners, Pan "Du Du" Wei-luen (16 wins with a 2.26 ERA) and Pete Munro (14 wins with a 2.03 ERA), should be able to keep the Bears bats relatively in check, even though Munro did not have his best game the last time he faced the Bears, which resulted in a 15-4 Bears win.
Offensively for the Bears, the heart of the order consisting of sluggers Raul Gonzalez, Chen Chin-fong and Lin Chih-sheng will try to replicate its success against the Lions pitching in their final two wins over the Lions, while the bottom of the order, headed by Shih Chih-wei, will also look to do some damage with their bat to give the Bears starters the run support they will need to win.
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