The La New Bears recovered from back-to-back losses to the Sinon Bulls with a convincing 13-2 home win over their archrivals from Taichung at the Kaohsiung County Baseball Stadium last night to avoid a sweep by the Bulls in the weekend series.
Luis Villarreal tossed six effective innings of one-run ball by scattering five hits for his fifth win of the year. The American southpaw remained unbeaten at 2-0 in his four starts against the Bulls. He also collected a pair of saves and a hold in six relief appearances with a minuscule .71 ERA that makes him the designated Bull-killer among the Bears’ pitchers.
After two off games against the Bulls who held the Bears to a lone run in 18 innings of play, a very anxious Bears pack greeted Bulls starter Lin Ying-jeh with a pair of singles and a double in the opening frame that gave the hosts a quick 2-0 lead.
PHOTO: HUANG CHIH-YUAN, TAIPEI TIMES
The lead would last less than two innings as the Bulls answered with a run of their own in the third, courtesy of an RBI single by Chang Jien-ming that made it 2-1.
The Bears would strike again in the fifth with two more runs that knocked out Lin, but the damage seemed pale in comparision to what would transpire in the eighth as the hosts teed off against three different Bulls hurlers with eight runs on nine hits, capped by Tsan Chih-yao’s two-run triple to effectively end the game.
Seven different hitters had multi-hit games on a night they amassed 22 hits off five Bulls pitchers, led by Chen Chin-fong’s four-for-five hitting with a couple of RBIs. Lin Chih-ping also drove in three runs by belting three hits to lead the scorers.
Elephants 2, Lions 1
Chou Si-chi’s run-scoring single with men on first and second broke a 1-1 deadlock in the top of the ninth as the Brother Elephants overcame a 0-1 deficit with two ninth-inning runs to defeat the Uni-President Lions 2-1 at the Douliou County Baseball Stadium last night.
The win not only extended the Elephants’ current winning streak to a season-best nine and counting, it also widened their lead over the second-placed Sinon Bulls to two games after the Bulls lost to the Bears.
The 4,000-plus crowd that waited through nearly 90 minutes of rain was treated to a classic pitchers duel between the Elephants’ Jim Magrane and the Lions’ Pan “Du Du” Wei-luen, who held their ground in a scoreless tie through the sixth inning, before the Lions finally broke through with a run in the bottom of the seventh on an RBI single by Kao Guo-ching.
Trailing 0-1 heading into the top of the ninth, the Elephants put a runner on first against Lions closer Jerome Williams with a single by Chen Jiang-ho and scored the tying run on the ensuing play when a costly fielding error by the Lions defense allowed the runner to score all the way from first, setting the stage for Chou’s game-clincher.
Elephants closer Ryan Cullen was credited with the win for his one-and-a-third-innings of scoreless relief, while the loss went to Williams.
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