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).
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but