Taiwan took sole possession of the second-place spot in the Group A standings by trouncing the Philippines 17-0 in four innings in the preliminaries of the 12U Baseball World Cup at the Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium in Tianmu last night.
Chiu Chih-heng and Chen Luo-yang batted a perfect combined six-for-six, with Chiu driving in four runs on a pair of homers and Chen scoring twice for the defending champs.
Taiwan opened the game with three first-inning runs off Philippines starter Juan Laurel and blew the game wide open with an eight-run second, highlighted by Chen Po-chun’s two-run blast.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
Picking up the win for Taiwan was starter Chao Sheng-yao, who allowed no runs on a lone hit over two innings to beat his counterpart Laurel. Right-hander Laurel did not have a good game as he was chased two outs into the top of the first.
Taiwan will close out the preliminaries with a big game against Italy in Tianmu this evening.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
BRAZIL 5, ITALY 2
Brazil opened yesterday’s play following an off day for everyone on Tuesday with a win over Italy in Tianmu.
Victor Guenji was the star of the game for Brazil, who improved to 3-2 in Group A play, good enough to advance into the second round of play.
The right-hander not only pitched shutout ball on a two-hit gem with five strikeouts over four frames for the win, but also batted two-for-three with three RBIs to account for more than half of his team’s total runs.
Brazil opened the contest with two quick runs in the bottom of the first and padded their lead with a run in the second, before plating two more in the fifth to take a seemingly insurmountable 5-0 lead.
Even though Italy finally got on the board with two runs in the top of the sixth it was too little, too late for the European team as they settled for a tough loss that has more than likely knocked them out of the second round.
VENEZUELA 24, PAKISTAN 0 (4th)
Carlos Fernandez hit for the cycle in Venezuela’s crushing of Pakistan at the Taipei Youth Park yesterday.
The outfielder batted a solid four-for-five with a team-high four RBIs to lead a South American attack that packed in 24 runs in just four innings of play.
All but two Venezuela hitters had at least three hits on the day in a match that was Venezuela’s from the get-go.
Starter Juanpedro Campos and fellow reliever and game-winner Diego Cartaya combined to deny Pakistan any hits, with the former getting the win in three innings of fine play on the mound.
Other scores:
‧ USA 19, Russia 0 (4th)
‧ Panama 15, Hong Kong 0 (4th)
‧ Mexico 13, Czech Rep. 0 (5th)
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