A pair of runs in the eighth inning by the Uni-President Lions turned a 1-2 deficit into a 3-2 lead as they held on to defeat the Brother Elephants at the Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium in Tianmu yesterday afternoon to close out an otherwise wet weekend with a win.
Trailing by a run heading into the top of the eighth, the Cats led off the inning with back-to-back singles off Elephants reliever Luis Gonzalez, before Pan “TAKE” Wu-hsiung beat out a sacrifice bunt attempt at first for an infield single to load the bases.
That set up Kao Guo-ching’s bases-loaded walk to tie the game at 2-2 and, with the bases still juiced, that paved the way for Chang “OEO” Tai-shan’s sacrifice fly that knocked in the go-ahead run.
Even though Gonzalez got out of the jam without giving up any more runs, the damage was done as the Lions looked to Kao Jien-san and Lin Yueh-ping to toss a scoreless eighth and ninth respectively to preserve the victory for Yuya Kamada, who became the league’s first six-game winner after pitching a perfect seventh in relief of Lee Wei-hua.
Taking the loss was Gonzalez, who tossed a perfect seventh in relief of starter Lin Yu-ching, before surrendering the game-turning runs in the eighth to blow his first save opportunity of the year.
Monkeys 2, Bulls 1
Lin Chih-sheng homered in his first at-bat to give the Lamigo Monkeys a quick 2-0 lead in the opening frame as they held on to top the Sinon Bulls 2-1 on the road at the Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium yesterday afternoon.
It was only the second time that the veteran slugger had gone deep for his team in what many would consider a slow start, but it was just enough to lift the Primates past their foes in an important road win that kept them in stride with the top-ranked Lions as they nipped a two-game slide with the narrow win to conclude the weekend’s play.
RSS