Nee Fu-deh pitched eight-and-one-third innings of one-run ball with a career-high 13 strikeouts to lead the Chinatrust Whales past the dmedia T-Rex 6-1 at the Ilan County Baseball Stadium in Luodong on Thursday night and end a five-game losing skid for the marine creatures.
The soft-spoken lefty who has quietly emerged as one of the league’s top hurlers despite a mediocre 3-3 record, made a strong case on his behalf by taking a 6-0 shutout one out into the ninth before giving up the lone T-Rex run on a fielder’s choice to lose the shutout bid.
He was immediately replaced by reliever Huang Hong-ren in the interest of protecting his arm before Huang promptly retired the next two hitters to preserve the win.
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The contest began with the Whales needing only two innings to get to dmedia starter Willy Lebron of the Dominican Republic with four runs in a big second, highlighted by Lee Yi-wei’s two-run single to right to jump to a 4-0 lead.
Even though Lebron would not allow another run over the next four innings with a great second effort before being pulled at the start of the seventh, his offense did not exactly give him the run support he was looking for, because Nee had the dmedia hitters’ number.
Picking up the easy win was Nee, who improved to 3-3 for the year with an overpowering performance to top Lebron as the dmedia starter was dealt his second straight loss in as many games for allowing four runs (three earned) on eight hits over six innings to remain winless at 0-2 for the season.
Bears 8, Bulls 2
The La New Bears made it four in a row with an impressive 8-2 road victory over the Sinon Bulls in Taichung to sweep the two-game set against their archrivals on Thursday evening.
Just like the Whales in Luodong, the Bears also had a shutout going late in the game before the Bulls’ Huang Chung-yi broke it up with a two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth to avoid what would have been back-to-back shutout losses at home. The Bulls were shut out 0-5 the night before.
After three scoreless innings, the rambunctious Bears finally broke through with four runs off Bulls starter Michael Connolly, thanks to a bases-clearing three-run double by Huang Long-yi and an RBI-single from Yu Jin-deh on the ensuing at-bat in a 4-0 game.
They would add another run in the sixth off Wang Guo-jin on a wild throw by the Bulls reliever that scored the Bears runner all the way from second before blowing the game wide open in the eighth with a pair of runs on an opposite-field triple by Chen Chin-fong.
Chen Fong-min’s run-scoring groundout in the ninth made it 8-0 in favor of the Bears before the Bulls put up two meaningless runs in the bottom of the inning to take away the shutout.
Bears starter Hsu Wen-hsiung was credited with his fifth win of the season for blanking the Bulls in six scoreless innings on five hits, while his counterpart Connolly was hit with the loss for digging himself into a four-run hole from which he never recovered.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later