Chang “Prince of the Forest” Tai-shan hit his team-best seventh homer of the season and Jeffrey Farnsworth pitched 5-1/3 innings of shutout ball as the Sinon Bulls blanked the dmedia T-Rex 3-0 at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang on Sunday night.
The win not only gave Farnsworth his first victory since coming to Taiwan earlier this month, but also helped the Bulls sweep the two-game series against the T-Rex to remain a game ahead of the third-place President Lions in a tight race behind the league-leading La New Bears.
“This one was a lot of fun for us,” Chang said after the game, referring to his second home run in a week, a solo blast to left that put his team ahead 2-0 in the top of the sixth.
Failure to come up with timely hits ultimately cost the T-Rex the game as they missed out on two golden scoring opportunities in the sixth and seventh, leaving both two-on-with-one-out scoring chances empty-handed in a tough loss that dropped them to a miserable 4-12 mark, dead last in the league standings.
LIONS 9, BEARS 3
The President Lions also swept their two-game set against the top-ranked La New Bears on Sunday with an impressive 9-3 road win at the Kaohsiung County Baseball Stadium to close out the week with three straight wins.
Louis Pote improved to 11-3 for the year with the win, tossing seven solid innings of one-run ball on a half-dozen hits. It was the 10th quality start in 15 chances for the American righty, who leads his team in total victories.
Doing damage with his bat for the Lions was veteran slugger Chen Lien-hong, who crushed an offering from Bears reliever Tsai Ying-fong to deep-center in the top of the fifth for a three-run blast.
Also starring for the Lions were Yang Seng and Kao Guo-ching, who belted a pair of base hits apiece with three RBIs to account for the bulk of the Lions’ run production.
What had been a closely fought 1-1 tie through the fourth between Pote and his counterpart Hsu Wen-hsiung turned into a Lions rout as they sent a dozen men to the plate in a seven-run fifth that chased Hsu in his own backyard, dealing the Bears starter his third loss of the year.
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