Six early runs over the first two innings paved the way for the Lamigo Monkeys as they roughed up the Uni-President Lions to earn a 7-4 victory at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium last night to level the weekend series at one apiece.
Chen Guan-ren’s two-run double off Lions starter Pan “Du Du” Wei-luen was the highlight of a four-run first as the visitors vented their frustration after a tough loss to the Cats the night before. They added to their lead with a pair in the second to take a 6-0 advantage.
After a scoreless third, the Monkeys offense went to work again against the Lions pitching, as Yu Teh-lung led off the inning with a double off reliever Chiang Cheng-fong and scored two batters later on an RBI single by Lin Chih-sheng that made it 7-0.
After struggling against the stellar pitching of Monkeys starter Tseng Jau-hao, the Lions finally got on the board in the bottom of the fourth with Kao Guo-ching’s three-run home run.
Tseng regrouped in a hurry by retiring the next 10 batters he faced to take the 7-3 lead into the top of the eighth before loading up the bags to call it a night.
In came Lamigo reliever Chen Cheng-da, who kept the damage to a lone run as he allowed a sacrifice fly to right that scored the runner from third in a hitless eighth to make it 7-4.
Lions closer Robert Kawamoto then pitched a scoreless ninth to pick up his third save of the season.
Claiming his second win of the year was Tseng, who was charged for four runs on six hits over seven solid innings to beat his counterpart Pan, who lasted only three frames in a sub-par performance.
Pan is now 1-3 in six starting appearances this year.
Elephants 5, Rhinos 4 (11th)
Chien Fu-chih’s tiebreaking single with two outs scored the go-ahead runs in the top of the 11th as the Brother Elephants held off a late rally by the EDA Rhinos to escape with a win at the Cheng-ching Lake Baseball Stadium in Kaohsiung last night.
The Elephants took a 3-1 lead one out into the bottom of the eighth before reliever Hiroki Sanada served up back-to-back pinch-hit singles and was called for a balk to set up Wang Sheng-wei’s error at short that scored both runners to tie the game.
After a scoreless ninth and 10th, the Elephants took their second two-run lead in the top of the 11th on Chien’s clutch swing off Rhinos reliever Chen Huan-yang.
Manny Ramirez got one of the runs back with his league-leading fifth homer of the season to lead off the bottom of the 11th, but it was too little, too late for the Rhinos, as the Elephants’ Guan Da-yuan induced a pair of fly outs to preserve the win for his team.
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