Mike Johnson pitched three-run ball well into the eighth, Chung Cheng-yo and Jiang Chih-tsong each knocked in a run with a couple of hits apiece, and the La New Bears edged past the President Lions 4-3 at the Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium in Tienmu on Saturday evening.
The Canadian right-hander who joined the Bears at the start of the season has gone 15-0 to set a new league mark for consecutive wins in a single season, topping the old record of 14 straight wins to start off a season set by former Lions great Kuo Jing-hsin in 1996.
Along with the perfect 15-0 mark were 18 straight games in which Johnson recorded a quality start, six of which against the first-half champs Lions, making him the most feared and consistent hurler in the league.
Johnson could have easily been 19-0 if it were not for a few off games by the Bears offense which averaged less than four runs per game to back up its staff ace.
Saturday’s showdown between the top two clubs in the league saw the Bears jumped to a quick 2-0 lead in the top of the second against Luther Hackman in the normal Lions closer’s first start of the season.
The resilient Lions would half the deficit in the bottom of the same inning before tying the game up at 2-all in the bottom of the fourth on a sacrifice-fly by Kao Chih-hang.
Chung’s RBI single off Hackman would give the Bears their second lead of the game at 3-2 followed by Lin Chih-sheng’s one-run single in the seventh for that invaluable insurance run as the Lions rallied to fall within a run before fading away in the end.
Bulls 4, T-Rex 1
The Sinon Bulls rode the arm of rookie starter Lin Chi-wei over six shutout innings en route to a 4-1 win over dmedia T-Rex at the Yilan County Baseball Stadium in Luodong on Saturday evening.
The win not only snapped a three-game losing skid for the Bulls, but also avenged an ugly 1-6 loss to the same T-Rex team the night before to salvage a one-game split in the two-game series for the Bulls.
Three quick runs by the Sinon offense against dmedia starter Chang Hsien-chih in the bottom of the first set the tone early in the game as the Bulls dominated from the get go.
They would tack on a fourth run in the sixth to lead 4-0 before Lin was relieved by foreign help Jose Espinal at the start of the seventh.
Espinal would pitch a scoreless seventh before giving up a run in the eighth to break up the shutout. But the outcome of the game was never in doubt as the Dominican native worked out of trouble to pick up his second save of the year to preserve the win for Lin.
The T-Rex actually outhit the Bulls by a 7-4 margin in the game, but they failed to come up with the timely hits necessary to produce many runs in a losing effort.
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