The La New Bears avenged a tough loss to the Sinon Bulls on Saturday evening with a narrow 4-3 win at the Kaohsiung County Baseball Stadium last night, taking the three-game series by a 2-1 margin.
Starter Chris Mason tossed five innings of three-run ball to attain a 4-3 lead and got help from a stingy bullpen that allowed a lone hit over four innings of shutout relief to preserve his league-best sixth win of the season.
Lin Chih-sheng’s bases-loaded double sent all three runners home before Lin Hong-yu followed with a sacrifice fly two batters later to give the home host a 4-0 lead in the bottom of the third.
The Sinon offense answered with two runs of their own in the fourth, courtesy of a wild pitch by Mason and a run-scoring error by Bear second baseman Chang Jia-hao to half the Bear lead at 3-2.
Cheng Hong-da’s RBI single off Mason in the fifth made 4-3, which prompted La New skipper Tsai Rong-tsong to pull his starter after the inning.
The 4-3 advantage proved sufficient for La New as Luis Villarreal pitched a scoreless sixth and seventh before Tseng Jau-hao and Hsu Ming-jeh retired the final six Sinon hitters in order to preserve the win.
Taking the loss was Sinon starter Eric Junge, who lasted less than three innings with all four of the Bear runs charged against him on a half-dozen hits in a losing cause.
LIONS 4, ELEPHANTS 3
The Uni-President Lions also edged past the Brother Elephants by the same 4-3 margin at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium last night to clinch the weekend series with two wins and a tie.
Reliever Kao Jien-san nearly blew a 4-1 lead for the Cats in the seventh by allowing a two-run pinch-hit single to Brother’s Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min to make it 4-3.
Lin Cheng-fong and Lin Yueh-ping made sure that was as close as the Elephants got with the former striking out the first batter he faced to end the Elephants scoring threat and the latter getting the final four outs to keep the win intact.
Lions starter Luther Hackman was credited with the win for his six innings of one-run ball while the loss went to his counterpart Lee Jing-mu.
There are no CPBL games today.
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