Hsieh “The Ugly” Jia-shien homered for the second-straight game in an 8-6 win at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium on Sunday to help the dmedia T-Rex sweep the two-game series against the Chinatrust Whales.
The veteran slugger, who also went deep against the Whales in last Friday’s series opener, got hold of a pitch from Whales starter Nee Fu-deh and deposited it into the right-field stands in the bottom of the fourth for a two-run blast that cut the Whales’ lead to 3-2.
The Whales added another run in the top of the fifth on a sacrifice-fly by Carlos Villalobos to make it 4-2, but the T-Rex picked up five unanswered runs over the next two innings. They scored four in the fifth inning on the strength of three singles, two doubles and a rare triple off Nee and a single run in the sixth on an RBI-single by Lin “Wild Hog” Hong-yuan to claim a 7-4 lead.
The Whales managed to close within a run of dmedia with a pair of runs in the eighth on an opposite-field triple by Lu Jung-hsiung and a run-scoring single from Chen Jia-hong.
That was as close as they got, however, as the T-Rex put up an insurance run in the bottom of the same inning courtesy of a lining single to right by Kuo Ming-ren to seal the game.
Venezuelan lefty Leavildo Pargas was credited with his first win of the season in his Taiwan debut thanks to a potent offense that provided him with eight runs to cover the four he allowed (three earned) on as many hits over five-and-a-third innings, including Chen’s home run.
For the Whales, who have lost five in a row, Nee was tagged with his second defeat of the year for allowing seven runs on 11 hits in five innings of work.
Offensively for the T-Rex, six different players recorded multiple hits, led by Kuo’s 3-for-5 effort with two RBIs. Lin, Hsieh and newcomer Napoleon Calzado of the Dominican Republic each had two RBIs on two hits.
Lions 15, Bulls 7
Seven late runs by the Lions offense broke a 5-5 stalemate in the top of the seventh and the Lions went on to beat the Sinon Bulls 15-7 on the road in Taichung to tie the series at one apiece.
Eleven Lions batters made their way to the plate and teed off against three different Sinon hurlers for five singles, two doubles and a pair of walks to deliver the knockout punch in the seventh inning.
The Bulls struck first in the bottom of the second with three runs, but the Lions soon made it 4-3 as Kao Guo-ching’s bases-clearing three-run triple capped a four-run fourth for the Lions.
The Bulls evened it up at 4-4 thanks to Cheng Da-hong’s RBI-double in the fifth. In the following inning, the teams traded another run each before the Lions took control in the seventh.
Picking up his first win of the season with one-and-a-third innings of one-run relief was second-year southpaw Pan Jung-rong.
Suffering the loss for the Bulls was Katayama Fumio of Japan, who served up six of the seven seventh-inning runs on five hits and a walk in his first loss of the year.
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