The Uni-President Lions nipped a six-game losing skid with a convincing 8-3 road win over the EDA Rhinos at Cheng Ching Lake Baseball Stadium in Greater Kaohsiung last night to avoid a series sweep against their nemeses from Tainan.
Liu Fu-hao’s two-run triple sparked a four-run seventh that blew a 3-1 Lions lead wide open. It was exactly what the doctor ordered for the slumping Cats after the front office announced the temporary demotion of manager Terushi Nakashima and pitching coach Makoto Kito to the minors in an attempt to bring some “changes to the team.”
The move proved effective for the Lions as interim skipper Chen Lien-hung got a solid performance out of Wang Ching-ming, who held the Rhinos offense to an unearned run on three hits over five innings to earn the much-needed win.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
The regular setup man, who was named a starter for the first time in two years and Wang made sure he did not make a fool out of Chen for making such a bold move.
Trailing 7-1 heading into the bottom of the seventh, the Rhinos managed to plate a pair of runs off Lions reliever Chiang Cheng-fong on Lin Wei-en’s two-run single.
That was as close as the first-half champions got as the Lions concluded the scoring with a run in the eighth and closed it out with a scoreless eighth and ninth from Kao Chien-san and Lin Yueh-ping.
MONKEYS 5, ELEPHANTS 4, 10 INNS
Lin Cheng-yi’s walk-off single with a runner on third scored the game-winner in the bottom of the 10th as the Lamigo Monkeys edged past the Brother Elephants 5-4 at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium last night to sweep the weekend series against the league leaders.
It was the second straight one-run game that the defending champions have taken from the Elephants after allowing the men in the golden uniforms to rally late in the game to send it into the extra session, before winning it in the 10th.
Back-to-back hits by Tsan Chih-yao and Lin Hung-yu with runners in scoring position gave the Primates a quick 2-1 lead in the bottom of the first, before they added another two in the fourth when Kuo Sho-yen and Chung “Yo Yo Man” Cheng-yo knocked in two with consecutive sacrifice flies.
The Elephants produced a run in the fifth that made it 4-2, before scoring two more in the eighth off the Monkeys’ bullpen that tied it 4-4, setting up the dramatic finish in the extra inning.
J.D. Durbin was credited with his second win in as many days to improve to 5-1 for the season.
Freddie Freeman homered and drove in four runs, Shohei Ohtani also went deep and Roki Sasaki earned his first major league win as the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves 10-3 on Saturday night for their seventh straight victory. The Dodgers have won the first two games of the series to improve to 5-0 against Atlanta this year. Los Angeles’ three-game sweep at home early in the season left the Braves 0-7. Sasaki allowed three runs and six hits over five innings. The 23-year-old right-hander gave up a home run to Ozzie Albies, but received plenty of offensive support in his
FOCUS: ‘We came out here with a goal in mind ... to keep our foot on their throat and on their neck, and continue to play 48 minutes of basketball,’ Donovan Mitchell said The Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday thrashed the Miami Heat to cruise into the next round of the NBA playoffs as the Golden State Warriors battled past the Houston Rockets 109-106 to move to the brink of a series victory. After pounding Miami 124-87 in game three on Saturday, No.1 Eastern Conference seeds Cleveland once again piled on the misery for their outclassed opponents with a crushing 138-83 victory to complete a 4-0 series win. The 55-point drubbing was the largest series-clinching victory in NBA playoff history and sets up a series against either the Indiana Pacers or Milwaukee Bucks in
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A man fell from the 6.4m-high Clemente Wall in right field at PNC Park in Pittsburgh during Wednesday night’s game between the Pirates and the Chicago Cubs. Right after Andrew McCutchen hit a two-run double in the seventh inning to put the Pirates ahead 4-3, players began waving frantically for medical personnel and pointing to the man, who had fallen onto the warning track. The fan was tended to for approximately five minutes by members of both the Pirates and Cubs training staffs as well as PNC personnel before being removed from the field on a cart. The team issued a statement shortly