Scoring three quick runs in the first inning, the Brother Elephants struck early against the Sinon Bulls and held on to garner a 4-3 road win at the Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium last night.
The win not only brought the Elephants to within a half-game of the top-ranked Lamigo Monkeys for the second-half title with two games remaining in the regular season, but more importantly it kept their title hopes alive as they looked to finish out the season strong.
Trailing the Monkeys by a game heading into last night’s contest, the Elephants were on the verge of elimination if they could not come up with a win since a loss would set them back a game-and-a-half behind the idled Monkeys with two games remaining.
And a win was exactly what they mustered as they pounded three doubles and a single off Luo Cheng-long for a quick 3-0 lead that chased the Sinon rookie starter before he could even register an out and survived a nerve-wracking ninth to keep the win intact.
Down 4-2 to start the home half of the ninth, the Bulls led off with an opposite-field single by Lin Cuen-sheng off Elephants closer Lee Fong-hua.
Sinon scored a run on the merit of two singles one out later to place runners on first and second in what seemed a golden scoring opportunity.
However, the bend-but-not-break Elephants rose to the occasion as Lee recorded a key strikeout on a called third strike against the Bulls’ Hsu Guo-long for the second out of the inning, before the veteran right-hander retired Sinon’s Fang Keh-wei with a nasty 2-2 slider that Fang swung right through to strand a pair of runners for the win.
“That was as big a strikeout as I’ve seen in a long time,” Elephants skipper Chen Rei-chen said after the game about Lee’s clutch performance.
Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min’s second-inning sacrifice fly, which gave his team a 4-1 lead at that point, proved critical for the Elephants, as it gave them just enough margin to outlast a brilliant relief effort by the Bulls bullpen that held the Elephants scoreless from the third inning on.
Elephants starter Tyler Lumsden was credited with the win to even his season mark at 10-10, allowing two runs on six hits over 5-1/3 innings of work, while the loss went to his counterpart Luo in his shortest start of the season.
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