Miscues on the part of the Lamigo Monkeys defense led to a pair of unearned runs for the Uni-President Lions and that was all it took for the home Cats to defeat the visiting Primates in a 4-3 final at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium last night.
The win not only stretched the Lions’ home-win streak to nine in a row, but also clinched the weekend series for them as they edged past the Monkeys by a run for the second straight night, following Friday night’s 3-2 loss to deny Lamigo what could have been a pair of probable victories.
Huang Hao-ran’s passed ball with runners on second and third and two outs scored the second of two runs for the Lions in the bottom of the first, before a wild pitch by Matt DeSalvo, after an error by the Lamigo shortstop had advanced the runner to third on the previous play, made it 3-0 in favor of the Lions over the first two innings of play.
Trailing by three, the Primates finally got on the board in the top of the fourth on the strength of Tseng Hao-jui’s two-run double off Lions starter Ryan Edell, only to see DeSalvo serve up a bases-loaded walk in the bottom of the same inning to keep it a two-run game.
The run by the Lions proved critical, as the Monkeys managed to shorten the gap once again in the seventh with a solo blast by Yeh Chu-hsuan off reliever Kao Jien-san.
However, that was as close as they got as the Lions buckled down in the eighth, despite allowing a runner to reach third before closer Wang Jing-ming struck out the side in the ninth to preserve the narrow win.
Edell was credited with his third win in as many starts since joining the Lions late last month. The American southpaw allowed two runs on five hits over six effective innings of work.
Taking the loss was his counterpart and fellow countryman DeSalvo, who pitched well enough to win, but fell victim to a pair of unearned runs over 4-1/3 frames to settle with a 5-4 record for the year.
Elephants 16, Bulls 6
Eleven runs over the last three innings of play blew an otherwise close game wide open as the Brother Elephants humbled the Sinon Bulls 16-6 at the Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium last night to deal the home Bulls their second straight defeat.
Homers by Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min and Chen Jiang-ho led a 17-hit attack for the men in the golden uniforms as they roughed up the Sinon pitching with the long ball to put the game away in the seventh and ninth respectively.
That made a winner out of starter Tseng Song-wei, who won for the second time since coming off the disabled list in late-June, allowing four runs on 10 hits over 5-2/3 innings to beat the Bulls’ Lin Chi-wei, who surrendered four in only 1-1/3 innings in his 10th loss of the year.
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