Miscues by the defense cost the Chinatrust Whales the game as they allowed three unearned runs to fall to the Sinon Bulls 3-0 at the Taichung Municipal Baseball Stadium on Saturday night.
The marine creatures tied a club record for most errors in a game by committing seven on the night, squandering an otherwise brilliant outing by starter Steve Watkins who gave up all three of the unearned runs in the game on as many hits over seven solid innings to lose his sixth straight.
Capitalizing on the Whales misfortunes were the Bulls who rang up two runs in the bottom of the fourth on a hit and three errors to lead it 2-0 before adding on another run in the seventh to run away with the gift-wrapped 3-0 win.
The Whales offense had plenty of chances in getting Watkins off the hook for the loss with six hits and three walks off Bulls starter Lin Chi-wei over through the seventh and actually outhit the Bulls by a whopping 7-3 margin. But failure to come up with the timely hits by going a futile 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position left them empty-handed in the end.
Lin was credited with his fourth victory of the year to even his record at 4-4 while Watkins suffered his eighth defeat of the season despite turning in his third straight quality start.
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