The dmedia T-Rex continued their winning ways with a convincing 11-4 victory over the President Lions at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium on Monday to up their winning streak to three in a row.
Outfielder Chen Yuan-jia was the hero of the night with a single, double and a triple on a 3-for-5 outing with four RBIs to champion a rambunctious attack that had torn up opposing pitchers with 32 runs in their last three wins. He was a home run short of hitting for the cycle.
“It [hitting for the cycle] would have been nice if I could get one over the fence, but I’m very pleased with what I’ve done tonight,” Chen said after the game.
PHOTO: LIN CHENG-KUN
He was the unanimous choice by the members of the press on hand to win the game MVP.
Also starring for the T-Rex on offense were powerful sluggers Hsieh “the Ugly” Jia-shien, who went 2-for-5 with an RBI, and Chou Si-chi, who belted his second homer of the season with a two-run blast in the sixth off Lions reliever Lin Cheng-fong.
The contest began with dmedia scoring a pair of runs in the bottom of the second on a sacrifice-fly by Wu Jia-hui and an RBI-single from Huang Hao-ran before they padded their lead by four in the fifth, highlighted by Chen’s two-run triple, to build a commanding 6-0 lead.
The Lions finally got on the board in the top of the sixth with two runs off dmedia starter Chen Jien-fu when he walked in a run with the bases loaded before giving up another on an RBI-groundout by the Lions’ Kao Chih-kang.
That was the extent to which the defending champs managed to hang with the T-Rex as they erupted for five runs in the bottom of the same inning on the strength of five singles, a double and a home run to blow the game wide open at 11-2.
The Lions would score two more runs before the final out, but that was too little too late as they dropped this one by a mile to start off the week on a low note.
Chen Jien-fu was credited with his first win of the season after two earlier losses by tossing five innings of two-run ball on three hits. He also struck out three and walked five.
As for the hapless cats, an inability to keep the opposing hitters from getting big innings against them cost them the game as starter Brian Adams was hit with his first loss of the year after starting off the year in great shape with a 2-0 mark.
Elephants 8, Bulls 1
Seven late-game runs by the Brother Elephants offense broke a 1-1 over the final three innings to help them top the Sinon Bulls on the road in an 8-1 decision in Taichung in Monday’s other game.
After giving up a first-inning run to trial the Bulls 0-1, the men in their golden uniforms finally came through in the top of the fifth when Chen Rei-cheng singled to lead off the inning, advanced to third two batters later, and scored on Chu Hong-seng’s sacrifice-fly to left to tie it at 1-all.
After a scoreless sixth inning, the Elephants stampeded all over the Bulls on their own turf by striking for two runs in the seventh before stringing together three straight base hits, all after two outs, to plate four runs in the eighth.
That was more than enough for the pitching staff as starter Liao Yu-cheng picked up his league-leading third win of the season with seven solid innings of one-run ball on four hits before fellow bullpen mates Tseng Jia-min and Todd Moser chipped in a scoreless inning each in the eighth and ninth to fend off the Bulls.
Suffering the loss for the Bulls was starter Tsai Ming-jin, who cruised through the first six innings with minimal resistance before running into a world of trouble in the seventh en route to his first defeat of the year.
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