Chen Guan-ren’s RBI-triple broke a 1-1 deadlock in the bottom of the eighth and the Brother Elephants went on to defeat the Sinon Bulls 5-1 at the Taichung Municipal Baseball Stadium on Sunday night to sweep the two-game series.
The top RBI man for the Elephants came through for his team again like he had done so many times with a liner beamed to the right-center gap that scored the runner all the way from first for the go-ahead run.
The classic pitchers’ duel between the Elephants’ Liao Yu-cheng and the Bulls’ Yu Wen-bin saw neither offense able to do much with Yu allowing an unearned run in the third due to a two-base error by his right fielder and Liao giving up a solo blast to Lin Tsung-nan in the fifth for the lone Bulls’ run in a 1-1 tie.
The game quickly turned into a struggle between the bullpens after the sixth with both starters departing after 80-plus pitches.
And the Elephants seemed to have the upper hand from that point on as the hitters finally broke through in the eighth with a pair of runs off Sinon reliever Tsai Ming-jin before tacking on two more insurance runs in the ninth to blow the game wide open in the end.
Brother reliever Yeh Yong-jeh was credited with his second win of the year for his two scoreless innings of perfect relief to beat his counterpart Tsai who entered in the sixth and threw two solid innings before running into a world of trouble in the eighth over a losing cause.
BEARS 14, WHALES 3
Mike Johnson tossed 6-1/3 innings of three-run ball and Chen Chin-fong drove in four runs with a grand slam as the La New Bears erupted for 14 runs on 16 hits to roll past the Chinatrust Whales 14-3 at the Kaohsiung County Baseball Stadium on Sunday.
With the win, his seventh of the year, Johnson became the second seven-game winner in the league for a share of the lead in total wins with the Lions’ Louise Pote, who beat the T-Rex last Friday to pocket his seventh win of the year.
Lin Chih-sheng’s opposite-field single in the top of the first quickly put the home Bears ahead 1-0 before they added seven more runs by the fifth with two in the third, three in the fourth, and two more runs in the fifth to bust the game wide open at 8-0.
The Whales finally got on the board in the top of the seventh with three runs off a fatiguing Johnson when Lin Yong-kuen singled home the runner from second before Kuo Dai-yong double in a pair of runs to make it 8-3.
That was as close as the Whales got as the Bears dialed up six runs in the bottom of the seventh, highlighted by Chen’s grand slam to leave no doubts on the outcome of this game.
Six different Bears hitter had multi-hit games on the night with Yu Jin-deh and Shih Chih-wei connecting for three hits apiece while Lin and Chen each a had with seven combined RBIs.
Suffering the loss for the Whales was starter Kao Min-jing who allowed six runs on nine hits over 3-1/3 innings of work to drop to a 2-4 mark for the year.
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