The La New Bears continued their winning ways by downing the Brother Elephants 8-4 at the Kaohsiung County Baseball Stadium on Thursday night to take the two-game series.
Gary Burnham hit his second homer in as many games and starter Huang Jung-chung pitched six solid innings of two-run ball to help the home Bears win their fourth straight and 10 of their past dozen.
The Bears wasted little time to show off their bats against Mai Jia-rei by tallying three quick runs off the Elephants rookie right-hander in the opening frame on the strength of a single, a double, two walks and a run-scoring wild pitch by Mai to take an early 3-0 lead.
PHOTO: HUANG CHIH-YUAN, TAIPEI TIMES
After a scoreless second, the Elephants answered with two runs of their own in the top of the third when Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min and Chen Guan-ren came through with back-to-back RBI-singles off Huang to make it 3-2 in favor of the Bears.
Consecutive run-scoring doubles by Tsai Jien-wei and Shih Chih-wei on top of a two-out single by Jian Chih-tsong translated into three more runs for the Bears in the bottom of the fifth as they led 6-2.
Even though the Elephants would plate their third run of the game in the top of the seventh to fall within three, that was as close as they got as the Bears came up with two big runs in the bottom of the same inning on a two-run blast by Burnham to blow the game open en route to the 8-4 final.
Picking up his first win of the season with six solid innings of two-run ball was Huang in his first game back since being suspended (for five games) for charging the home plate umpire on April 4th. He allowed eight hits with a pair of walks.
Taking the loss for the Elephants was Mai, who allowed six runs on seven hits in four-and-one-third innings with three strikeouts and two walks.
The Elephants actually outhit the Bears by a sizable 14-10 margin. But failure to come up with the clutch hits they needed ultimately cost them the game as they stranded a total of nine runners on the night in a losing cause.
T-Rex 6, Whales 3
The dmedia T-Rex salvaged a series-split by doubling up on the Chinatrust Whales in a 6-3 decision at the Chiayi City Baseball Stadium on Thursday to avenge their series-opening loss to the Whales two nights before.
Lai Jung-nan joined the Bears’ Mike Johnson as the only four-game winners in the league with five strong innings of play in front of a home crowd. The Chiayi native allowed three runs (only one earned) on three hits for his fourth win of the year.
Offensively for the victorious T-Rex, the top of the order did a whale of a job against the Chinatrust pitching as the first four hitters on the lineup all collected RBIs on the night, led by leadoff man Chou Si-chi’s 1-for-3 hitting with a pair of runs driven in.
Suffering the loss for the marine creatures was a wild Kao Min-jin, who lasted less than two innings by allowing two runs on two hits and three walks in his worst start of the season. The rookie right-hander had been rock solid for the Whales in his three previous starts, with 2.3 runs allowed over at least six innings in each start to net himself a pair of wins in the process.
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