Steve Hammond tossed six innings of shutout ball, while Kuo Yen-wen drove in a pair of runs to cap off a six-run second as the Lamigo Monkeys went on to defeat the Sinon Bulls 8-2 final the day game of their day-night doubleheader at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium yesterday.
It was the third straight start that Hammond has won in the second half of the season, keeping the American southpaw’s second-half record at a perfect 3-0 (6-6 for the season) as he continues to dominate the opposing hitters this month with a minuscule 0.78 ERA over that span.
Kuo, the budding star who returned to his home country to begin a Taiwanese career after a three-year stint with the Cincinnati Reds’ minor league affiliates was 1 for 3 to up his season average to .310, second-best among the Monkeys.
Photo Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
The Bulls dug themselves a six-run hole in the second as starter Tsai Ming-jin served up six straight singles without recording an out in what turned out to be an 11-at bat second.
That was more than ample for Hammond, who cruised through the sixth unharmed in a five-hit effort, before being relieved by Cheng Cheng-hao at the start of the seventh.
Even though Cheng gave up two runs on a triple to Lin Yi-chuan following a walk and a single to lose the shutout bid, the outcome of the contest was never in doubt as Cheng quickly worked out of a jam to end the seventh, before retiring the final six Sinon hitters in order to preserve the win.
Tsai was charged with the loss for allowing the Monkeys’ second-inning scoring binge in just one-plus inning of work, his shortest outing of the season by far, to drop to a 2-2 mark for the season.
MONKEYS 7, BULLS 3, GAME 2
The Monkeys picked up where they left off by downing the Bulls in the night game to sweep the doubleheader in Taoyuan.
Similar to the day game, the Primates also took advantage of a big inning early in the contest with six quick runs (all unearned) off Sinon starter Lin Ying-jeh in the third to make it 7-1.
The Bulls managed to pull within four of the Monkeys with a pair of runs in the fourth, but that was all they could muster as reliever Lin Jing-min turned in four solid innings of one-hit relief on a day where the Monkeys seemed to catch all the breaks.
Shih Chih-wei’s unassisted double play just about summed up the kind of day the Bulls had as the Monkeys first baseman leaped high to take a sure base hit away from the Bulls’ Wang Hsin-min and made a diving tag on the runner on first to end a scoring threat for the Bulls in the eighth.
Picking up the win was Lin, who took over for starter Lee Jui-guan in the fourth, while the loss went to Lin Ying-jeh, who fell victim to a pair of errors that led to seven unearned runs in a losing cause.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier