The Lamigo Monkeys teed off against the Sinon Bulls pitching in a slugfest at Taichung Baseball Field last night, racking up 19 hits to hammer the Bulls in a 9-3 final.
Lin Chih-sheng had a great day at the office with four hits and three runs scored to lead the Primates attack that saw a half-dozen hitters record multi-hit efforts to humble Bulls starter Luo Cheng-long and releiver Wu Cheng-hsien.
Also starring for the Monkeys was Lin Hong-yu, who racked up four RBIs on a pair of hits to give him a league-best 75 for the year, 10 more than Brother Elephants great Chen Guan-ren’s next-best total of 65.
Photo: Liao Yau-tung, Taipei Times
The win marked the Monkeys’ fourth straight and the sixth in their past seven contests, padding their league-leading record for the second half of the season to 13-4, head and shoulders above the second-place Elephants, who improved to 9-7 with a win over the Uni-President Lions last night.
The Monkeys wasted little time, with a run in the opening frame on three hits. They then added to their lead with four in the third as eight batters went to the plate to take a comfortable 5-0 lead.
They would score at least one run over the next three innings to blow the game wide open en route to a blowout victory.
With his offense spotting him a generous early lead, Monkeys starter Ken Ray more than held his own as he cruised through the first six innings unharmed before losing the shutout bid on a pair of runs in the seventh. He was credited with his ninth win of the year for allowing two runs on six hits while fanning seven and walking none.
The loss went to Luo, who lasted miraculously through eight innings on 121 pitches with nine allowed runs on a career-high 19 hits.
ELEPHANTS 8, LIONS 2
Six quick runs scored over the first three innings by the Brother Elephants set the tone early in their game against the Uni-President Lions as the men in the golden uniforms thwarted the Cats in an 8-2 final at Sinjhuang Baseball Stadium in New Taipei City last night.
Orlando Roman did not have his best stuff for the Elephants, but he still managed to pitch out of trouble with some help from a defense that turned two double plays to limit the Lions to two runs on the nine hits they smacked off the US right-hander over eight innings for the win.
Unlike Roman, Lions starter Dan Reichert was not as fortunate on the night as he lasted only three innings with six allowed runs, also on nine hits, to dig a hole too deep for his offense to overcome.
Trailing 6-0 after the sixth, the Cats finally got on the board in the seventh when Liu Fu-hao doubled off Roman with two outs and took third on a wild pitch, before reaching home on an error by the Elephants catcher on the same play to break up the shutout bid.
Offensively for the Elephants, Chang Cheng-wei’s 4 for 5 from the plate with an RBI led an extremely efficient offense that plated eight runs on the dozen hits they ground out off four different Lions pitchers.
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