Regular-season play in the Chinese Professional Baseball League resumed on Tuesday with the dmedia T-Rex doubling down on the Brother Elephants 4-2 at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang and the La New Bears skidding past the Sinon Bulls 8-6 at the Taichung Stadium.
Kao Wei’s RBI-single to left broke a 1-all tie in the top of the seventh for the T-Rex before they tacked on another run in the same inning with a double-steal that worked to perfection to lead the game 3-1.
Dmedia plated an insurance run in the eighth off Mai Jia-rei on a balk call against the Elephants reliever with a runner on third, and that was more than enough as reliever Yen Chih-chung pitched two-and-two-third innings of two-run relief to pick up his first career victory.
PHOTO: WANG MIN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
Offensively for the T-Rex, Kao’s 3-for-4 night with an RBI led all hitters, while Wang Chuan-jia and Huang Hao-ran each collected a pair of singles to account for the bulk of their team’s offense.
As for the Elephants, not even a solo homer by cleanup man Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min could save them from the eventual tough defeat, as the T-Rex were simply more efficient in their attack, scoring four runs compared with the Elephants’ two on the same eight hits.
Picking up the loss for the Elephants was starter Danny Core, who pitched one-run ball through the sixth inning before serving up two runs on three consecutive base hits to fall to a 6-3 record for the year.
BEARS 8, BULLS 6
The T-Rex were not alone in scoring an impressive road win on Tuesday night, as the Bears also paid an unfriendly visit to Taichung with an 8-6 win over the home Bulls to open the rest of the second half with a big “W.”
Run-scoring doubles by Pan Chung-wei and Chen Fong-min quickly put the Bears ahead 3-0 in the top of the second before they made it 6-0 in the fifth with three more runs, highlighted by Pan’s second RBI double of the game.
The Bulls managed to halve the Bears’ lead with a run in the bottom of the fifth, when Chen Chih-wei led off the inning with a standup double and scored on a lining single by Lin Tsong-nan before scoring twice more in the bottom of the sixth.
After the Bears struck for two more runs to make it 8-3, the Bulls rallied for three runs in the bottom of the ninth. But that was as close as they got, with Bears closer Jermaine Van Buren quickly regrouping to retire the final three hitters and save the day for his club.
Bears starter Tsai Ying-fong was credited with his first win of the season for allowing three runs on six hits over five innings to beat his counterpart Yu Wen-pin. Yu’s seven-game winning streak in Taichung was snapped as he gave up six runs on nine hits in 4-1/3 innings.
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