Andy Sisco set a new mark in strikeouts through the first eight games of a season earlier this week, ringing up 10 against the Lamigo Monkeys to bring his strikeout total for the season to a staggering 67, topping the previous mark of 66 set by former Brother Elephants great Hisanori Yokota in 2004.
The American southpaw, whose well-traveled baseball path includes stints in the Majors with the Kansas City Royals and the Chicago White Sox, has been a steady force in the EDA Rhinos rotation over the past two seasons with a solid 2.70 earned run average (ERA) in 133-1/3 innings pitched over 21 starts last year and a 1.73 ERA in his eight starts thus far this year to lead the league in total wins, with four to his credit.
To put things in perspective, the 67 K’s by Sisco is so far above and beyond the rest of the league that the next-best strikeout total is a minuscule 29 by the Elephants’ Cheng Kai-wen, followed by Sisco’s teammate Huang Sheng-hsiung’s 27.
His lead over Cheng is so big that barring an injury, Sisco could have the inside track to win the strikeout title by a windfall.
STRUGGLING ELEPHANTS
While the Rhinos are enjoying a 7-3 run over their past 10 contests to climb out of the cellar in the standings, the Chinatrust Brother Elephants are continuing their slump with only a pair of victories in their past 10 tries to drop to a league-worst 8-18-1 for the year (through Wednesday).
Wednesday night’s 5-3 loss to the Uni-President Lions was the latest of six straight defeats that the men in the golden uniforms have suffered recently, due to a lack of offense that is most evident in their worst-in-the-league .238 batting average.
Other than Chang Chih-wei’s team-best .339 batting average, no other Elephants hitters in their regular lineup have a batting average above .250.
Skipper Hsieh Chang-han has already demoted sluggers Chou Si-chi and Wang Sheng-wei to the minors to tweak their swings, not to mention implementing a massive roster change that includes the demotion of starters Cheng Hung-chi and Tseng Song-wei.
Also contributing to the Elephants’ offensive woes at the plate is the cooling off of swinger Lin Wei-chu, who has gone hitless in his past six games off the bench to see his average drop below .200.
The former star of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball League was expected to bring even more power to an Elephants lineup that already has the services of Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min (with a .250 average) and Chou (with a .167 average).
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