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).
For the first time in almost 36 years, a Parisian derby will be played in French soccer’s top flight when reigning champions Paris Saint-Germain FC take on the nouveau riche Paris Football Club (PFC) today. Not one of the players involved in today’s match — PFC’s 38-year-old third-choice goalkeeper Remy Riou is almost certainly not going to be involved — was born the last time there was a Parisian derby in Ligue 1. That was on Feb. 25, 1990, when Moroccan midfielder Aziz Bouderbala scored a brace as Racing Paris 1 beat PSG 2-1 at the Parc des Princes home that
BOUNCING BACK: Antetokounmpo had just returned from an eight-game injury absence last month, leading the Milwaukee Bucks to their third win in four games Giannis Antetokounmpo threw down the game-winning dunk with 4.7 seconds remaining to lift the Milwaukee Bucks to a 122-121 victory over the Charlotte Hornets and grab a slice of NBA history on Friday. The Bucks trailed by as many as 16 on their home floor, but Antetokounmpo scored 12 of his 30 points in the final quarter to help seal the win in a frantic finish that saw five lead changes in the final 45.7 seconds. The two-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) added 10 rebounds and five assists. It was his 158th regular-season game with at least 30 points, 10 rebounds and
Stan Wawrinka’s 40-year-old legs did not let him down over three-plus hours in his first singles match of a farewell tour yesterday. Three-time Grand Slam singles champion Wawrinka beat Arthur Rinderknech of France, who is ranked 29th to Wawrinka’s 157th, 5-7, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (5). The match went 3 hours, 16 minutes. Wawrinka last month announced that this year would be his last on the ATP tour. “Today was a tough battle ... it’s amazing to come here for the first time, to have so much support,” Wawrinka said yesterday. “Twenty years on tour, you kind of always play in the same place
Four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka yesterday got her season off to a winning start for Japan in the United Cup, after the UK’s Emma Raducanu pulled out of their singles clash with a fitness issue, while in Brisbane, Taiwan’s Latisha Chan and Wu Fang-hsien crashed out of the women’s doubles. In Perth, despite Osaka’s win, the UK took the match 2-1 with a deciding mixed doubles victory. Osaka was too strong for reserve and 276th-ranked Katie Swan, winning 7-6 (7/4), 6-1 as Raducanu watched from the sidelines. “I’m proud of how I fought,” Osaka said. “I’d never played here, it was tough.” Britain
RSS