The EDA Rhinos made it two shutouts in a row by blanking the Chinatrust Brother Elephants 4-0 at the Cheng Ching Lake Baseball Stadium in Greater Kaohsiung last night to take the weekend set by a 2-1 margin.
Fresh off a 5-0 shutout win over the Elephants in the night game of Saturday’s day-night doubleheader, the Rhinos picked up where they left off by plating a pair of runs in the fourth inning to take a 2-0 lead, thanks to Hu Chin-lung’s two-run homer off Elephants starter Lin Yu-ching.
It was the former Los Angeles Dodgers player’s first long ball of the season, despite his solid .317 average heading into the contest.
After a scoreless fifth and sixth, the hosts struck again with Kao Hsiao-yi bouncing a chopper through the left side of the Elephants infield to score a runner from second, before Lin Kuen-sheng came up big on a two-out single which not only drove in his team’s fourth run of the game, but also chased Lin Yu-ching.
The 4-0 cushion was ample for the Rhinos pitching as starter Hsiao Yi-chieh kept the Chinatrust hitters at bay, despite allowing a runner to reach safety in three of the five innings he pitched before handing a 2-0 lead to his bullpen at the start of the sixth inning.
An inability to produce any runs off Hsiao with six hits off the right-hander on the part of the Elephants hitters proved costly as his successors, Lai Hung-cheng and Lin Yen-fong, combined for three innings of one-hit relief, before closer Esmerling Vasquez retired the side in order in the bottom of the ninth to keep the shutout intact.
Picking up the victory was Hsiao, who improved to 3-2 for the season, while the loss was charged to Lin Yu-ching, who allowed all four of the Rhinos runs on seven hits over 6-2/3 frames of work to fall to 2-4 this season.
MONKEYS 16, LIONS 8
Scoring early and often, the league-leading Lamigo Monkeys topped the Uni-President Lions 16-8 at home at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium last night to avoid being swept by the Cats.
The victims of a pair of tough losses in front of their home crowd, the normally potent Primates, who had been held to only three runs in their previous two games, were quick to strike as they jumped to a 6-2 lead after three innings of play en route to the blowout win.
Former European champions Celtic exited the UEFA Champions League in the qualifiers after a 3-2 penalty shoot-out defeat at Kazakhstan’s Kairat Almaty on Tuesday, following two goalless legs in the playoff tie. Kairat are to compete in the competition proper for the first time, while Norway’s Bodo/Glimt and Cyprus’s Pafos also secured debut appearances after coming through the playoffs. Celtic’s night ended in disappointment as they missed three penalties in the shoot-out, Daizen Maeda failing with the decisive spot-kick. The slugfest of a match went into extra-time with neither side finding the net and few overall chances, echoing the first
Rangers on Wednesday bowed out of the UEFA Champions League playoffs with a humiliating 6-0 defeat at the hands of Club Brugge which piles further pressure on head coach Russell Martin, while SL Benfica secured a place in the competition proper at the expense of Jose Mourinho’s Fenerbahce. The Glasgow giants traveled to Belgium right up against it after losing 3-1 at home in last week’s first leg, when they conceded three times in the opening 20 minutes. They never looked like turning the tie around as Club Brugge took the lead inside five minutes at the Jan Breydelstadion through Nicolo Tresoldi
Noah Lyles on Thursday warmed up for the upcoming athletics world championships by chasing down Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo to win the 200m at the Diamond League final. Lyles trailed Tebogo at the start, but gradually erased the deficit over the final 100m and pipped the Botswana sprinter to the line by centimeters. Lyles, the Olympic 100m champion and reigning world champion in both the 100m and 200m, clocked 19.74 seconds in a slight headwind. Tebogo was 0.02 seconds behind. It was Lyles’ sixth Diamond League title, a record for track athletes. “Six, that’s a big number,” Lyles said. “Shoot, that’s another record on
Australian Alex de Minaur reached the second week of the US Open for the third year in a row with little fanfare on Saturday and said he intended to keep winning until the tournament organizers were forced to give him better billing. Despite being the eighth seed and a quarter-finalist last year at Flushing Meadows, De Minaur’s third-round match against German Daniel Altmaier was scheduled for Court 17 — the smallest of the four stadium venues in the precinct. “It is a little bit of a headscratcher for me. I’m not gonna lie,” he told reporters after progressing 6-7 (9/7), 6-3, 6-4,
RSS