Scoring a run each during the seventh, eighth and ninth, the Brother Elephants rallied from three down to force an 8-all draw against the Uni-President Lions in the day game of the day-night doubleheader at the Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium in Tianmu yesterday afternoon.
The hitters had their way against the opposing pitching with 28 combined hits in a slugfest, highlighted by the Elephants’ Huang Shih-hao, who batted a perfect 5-for-5 with a pair of RBIs, the second of which scored the tying run in the top of the ninth to help his team avoid a loss.
Also starring was the Lions’ Kuo Dai-chi, whose two-run homer off Elephants starter Yeh Yong-jeh in the bottom of the fourth turned a 4-5 deficit into a 6-5 lead for his club at that point. He ended up with three RBIs in the game.
PHOTO: LIU HSIN-DE, TAIPEI TIMES
Leading 6-5, the Lions would scored a pair of runs in the sixth, courtesy of an RBI single by Kao Guo-ching and an error on the Elephants defense that scored the runner from second on a wild throw for a seemingly comfortable 8-5 advantage.
The three-run lead proved insufficient for a generous Elephants bullpen that gave one of the runs right back in the seventh on Peng “Chia Chia” run-scoring double before allowing another in the eighth to set the table for Huang’s ninth-inning heroics.
Failure to protect the lead on the part of the bullpen cost Lions starter Wang Jing-ming his fifth win of the season that would have tied the right-hander with La New Bears’ Chris Mason for the lead in total wins thus far. Wang would remain unbeaten at 4-0 in eight starts this year.
The Uni-President Lions rallied from two down in the bottom of the ninth with three unanswered runs to defeat the Brother Elephants 4-3 in Tianmu in the night game of the doubleheader.
Hsu Fong-bin’s suicide squeeze scored the runner from third to break a 3-all tie in the bottom of the ninth for the win after Chou Guan-sheng’s clutch two-run triple off Brother closer Ryan Cullen erased a two-run deficit earlier in the inning.
The Elephants outhit the Lions by a 10-6 margin, but had to settle for the loss as the Lions stole one from them with a dramatic ninth.
Picking up the win was Lions reliever Tsai Shih-chin, who allowed a run on four hits over two innings for his first win of the year while Cullen was tagged with the loss for serving up the winning runs to the Lions.
The Sinon Bulls play the La New Bears today at 5:05pm in Kaohsiung County and the Brother Elephants play the Uni-President Lions in Taoyuan.
In other CPBL play yesterday, it was:
• Sinon Bulls 11, La New Bears 9
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