Mickey Callaway pitched six-plus innings of two-run ball and Kuo Dai-chi drove in a pair of runs on a 2-for-3 night as the Uni-President Lions defeated the La New Bears 5-2 in Tainan on Sunday to sweep the three-game series.
The series sweep not only returned the favor for the Cats — who had fallen victims to a Bears sweep a week earlier — but also helped them claim a two-game lead over the second-place Bears.
“It was a big win for us given the fact they did the same thing [sweeping the series] last weekend,” Lions skipper Lu Wen-sheng said after the game.
PHOTO: LIU HSIN-DE, TAIPEI TIMES
His crew will take on the Brother Elephants in Sinjhuang tomorrow evening.
Slugger Lin Chih-sheng’s RBI-groundout in the top of the first gave the visitors a quick 1-0 advantage.
The Lions roared back with an equalizer off Bears starter Mike Johnson in the bottom of the same inning before plating three more runs in the second, capped by Kuo’s two-run single with two outs.
Neither team managed to score again over the next four innings, with Callaway and Johnson keeping the opposing hitters in check until the seventh, when Chen Chin-fong’s solo blast off Callaway made it 4-2.
That was as close as the Bears came as the Lions’ bullpen retired all but two of the next nine hitters to preserve Callaway’s fifth win of the year.
BULLS 4, ELEPHANTS 1
The Sinon Bulls ended a dreadful five-game slide on Sunday with a convincing win over the Brother Elephants in Tianmu thanks to a spectacular effort by starter Shoda Itsuki and the timely hitting of veteran catcher Yeh Jung-chang.
Itsuki took a 4-0 shutout one out into the eighth before being relieved, while Yeh bounced a chopper to shallow-right against a drawn-in Elephants infield in the sixth that scored runners on second and third to put the Bulls ahead 4-0.
The win by Shoda was the Japanese hurler’s sixth of the year, tying him with the Bears’ Aaron Rakers for the lead in total victories.
Elephants starter Liao “the Golden Submarine” Yu-cheng took the loss, pitching well enough for the win with four allowed runs (three earned) in five-and-a-third innings, but he was simply outpitched by his Japanese counterpart.
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