Pan “Du Du” Wei-luen tossed seven strong innings of two-run ball, Marshall McDougall drove in a pair of runs on a solid 2-for-4 hitting, and the Uni-President Lions went on to defeat the Brother Elephants 4-2 at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang last night.
It was the best outing of the season thus far for the Lions staff ace, who didn’t have a stellar start as he did over the past seven seasons, dropping four of his first six decisions to settle with a 3-4 mark after yesterday’s win.
As for McDougall, the league’s best hitter heading into last night’s contest with an awesome .349 average, it was the 12th multi-hit game that the US slugger enjoyed in the 27 games played so far.
The Lion hitters went to work early against Brother starter Jim Magrane, with a pair of singles and a walk to load up the bases for McDougall to deliver a two-run single in the top of the opening frame that spotted Du Du a quick 2-0 lead.
The Elephants would fight back with a pair of runs in the next inning, courtesy of an RBI groundout by Wang Sheng-wei and a run-scoring single by Yu Jau-ren, to even things up in a hurry at 2-all.
The tie would last less than an inning as the Lions’ Chuang Jing-heh led off the top of the third with a single off Magrane and scored two batters on Kuo Dai-chi’s single to regain a 3-2 lead.
Uni-President kept the same 3-2 lead through the seventh, with neither offense able to produce any runs against Du Du and Magrane until Hsu fong-bin’s one-run single made it 4-2 in favor of the Lions in the top of the eighth.
Lions setup man Lin Cheng-fong then pitched a scoreless eighth despite allowing a leadoff double to Chen Guan-ren before closer Lin Yueh-ping retired the final three Elephant hitters to pick up his ninth save of the year.
Taking the tough loss was Magrane, who pitched well enough to win with only three allowed runs over six-and-two-thirds innings of work, but was simply outdone by a very sharp Du Du to fall to a 3-3 mark for the year.
The Lions play the Elephants again today at 2:05pm in Sinjhuang, while the La New Bears play the Sinon Bulls in Taichung at 2:05pm.
In other CPBL play, it was:
• La New Bears 5, Sinon Bulls 4
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