The Chinatrust Brother Elephants split their day-night doubleheader with the EDA Rhinos at the Cheng Ching Lake Baseball Stadium in Greater Kaohsiung yesterday, with the Elephants winning the day game 8-2 and the Rhinos returning the favor in a 5-0 shutout at home.
Cheng Kai-wen was the man of the hour for the men in the golden uniforms with eight solid innings of one-run ball on seven hits to lead Chinatrust to a much-needed win that nipped a three-game slide.
The former Hanshin standout in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball fanned six while walking none to improve to 3-0 for the season.
Offensively for the Elephants, Wang Sheng-wei’s bases-clearing three-run double down the third-base line broke a 2-0 game wide open in what ended up being a four-run fourth.
Even though the Rhinos finally scored in the bottom of the fifth to avoid a shutout, the outcome had been decided long before the final out in the ninth.
Starter Andy Sisco was charged with the loss for surrendering six runs on seven hits over four innings to drop to 5-3 for the year. It was his first defeat in nearly a month after winning Pitcher of the Month last month with a 3-1 mark.
In the night game in Kaohsiung, newcomer Freddy Garcia of Venezuela treated the sellout crowd of 12,000-plus to six innings of shutout ball on four hits before being pulled after 77 pitches.
His counterpart, Chen Hung-wen, was equally impressive for a time by holding the Rhinos scoreless through six, but he ran out of luck in a five-run seventh to suffer his second defeat of the year.
Picking up the win for the Rhinos was reliever Lin Yen-fong, who replaced Garcia in a scoreless seventh despite allowing a hit, before closer Lin Yi-hao took on mop-up duty with a near-perfect eighth and ninth to keep the shutout intact.
Doing the damage at the plate for the Rhinos was Chang Chien-ming, whose clutch double off Chen with the bases loaded sparked the five-run scoring spree that sank the Elephants.
LIONS 2, MONKEYS 1
Pan “TAKE” Wu-hsiung’s eighth-inning double with men on first and second added a pair of runs that overturned a 0-1 deficit as the Uni-President Lions rallied to overcome the top-ranked Lamigo Monkeys with no more scoring at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium last night.
The win not only extended the second-placed Cats’ winning streak to four, but also reduced the Primates’ lead over them in the standings to a single game as they look to even things up with a series-sweeping win in this afternoon’s contest.
Lin Yueh-ping was credited with the win for tossing a scoreless seventh to beat his counterpart, Chen Yu-hsun, while Kuo Hung-chih pushed his league-leading save total to 10 with a perfect ninth.
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