Capitalizing on their opponents’ errors, the La New Bears came up with just enough runs on an off night by the offense to turn back the Chinatrust Whales in a 4-3 win at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang on Friday.
The win not only extended their winning streak to a season-high eight straight, but also upped their lead over the idled second-place Uni-President Lions to a full game in the heated race for the second-half title.
Outhit by the Whales by a 13-6 margin, the Bears made nearly every hit and the three costly errors by the Whales defense count to score four runs for starter Mike Johnson, and it seemed more than plenty to yield another “W” with staff ace pitching shutout ball through the seventh.
That was when the Whales’ Lee Yi-wei decided to make things interesting as he drove a pitch from Bears rookie Kuo Jien-hong deep over the leftfield wall for a three-run blast that pull his club to within a run in the bottom of the eighth.
The Bears would bend but not break as they allowed the Whales to load up the bases in the ninth before closer Jermaine Van Buren struck out the final two batters to preserve the victory.
Johnson was credited with his league-best 19th win of the year to beat his counterpart Nerio Rodriguez who pitched well enough for the win with two earned runs over six innings but was simply outdone by Johnson.
ELEPHANTS 7, BULLS 2
Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min connected for three hits, Kobayashi Ryokan pitched 6-2/3 innings of two-run ball, and the Brother Elephants rolled past the Sinon Bulls 7-2 at the Taichung Municipal Baseball Stadium on Friday evening to nip a recent two-game slide.
The win was exactly what the Elephants needed after they had been swept by the Uni-President Lions earlier this week to fall out of the second-half title contention, despite the fact they had secured a berth for postseason play in the wild-card spot.
The home Bulls actually got on the board first on an Elephants error that scored the runner all the way from second.
But that was the extent the Bulls controlled the game as it was all-Elephants from the second inning on with the visitors plating the next six runs to build a commanding 6-1 lead en route to the 7-2 triumph.
Picking up the win for the Elephants was Kobayashi who improved to 9-6 for the year with two unearned runs allowed while the Bulls’ Yang Jien-ming took the loss to fall to a league-worst 4-14 mark for the season.
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