The top-ranked Lamigo Monkeys took a quick 2-0 lead against the EDA Rhinos in the bottom of the second and went on to win 4-1 at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium last night.
Starter Ken Ray pitched seven effective innings of one-run ball on a four-hit gem to pick up win No. 6 for the league leaders, as they shook off a tough loss to the Uni-President Lions on Thursday to treat a home crowd of 10,000-plus to a nice home victory.
Lin “Chubby Kid” Hung-yu’s solo blast off EDA starter Huang Sheng-hsiung got the Primates on the board to lead off the bottom of the second, before Lin Chih-sheng doubled and scored on Yeh Chu-hsuan’s two-bagger that made it 2-0 in the same inning.
Neither club crossed the plate over the next three frames, with Huang and Ray holding their ground, before the home team struck again in the sixth, when Lin Chih-sheng led off the inning with his second double of the game and scored two batters later on a wild pitch by Huang.
Trailing by three against the stellar pitching of Ray, the Rhinos finally broke through in the seventh with Yang Guan-wei’s solo home run that cost Ray the shutout bid. However, that did not rattle the US hurler, who finished the inning without further damage.
The Monkeys put the icing on the cake with their fourth run in the eighth on Huang Hao-ran’s RBI single that made it 4-1, a lead that stood to the end despite a comeback threat by the Rhinos against closer Miguel Mejia in a two-hit ninth.
Tagged with the loss was Huang, who allowed three runs on six hits over 5-1/3 innings of work.
LIONS 8, ELEPHANTS 5
The Uni-President Lions rallied from a run down with a five-run eighth to turn back the Chinatrust Brother Elephants 8-5 at the Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium last night to avenge a 3-1 loss at the hands of the Elephants in Chiayi the night before.
Kao Chih-kang’s two-run triple off Elephants reliever Keng Bo-hsuan sparked what ended up being a five-run scoring spurt for the Cats that turned a 3-4 deficit into an insurmountable 8-4 lead.
Even though the Elephants managed to get one of the runs back in the bottom of the ninth against Kuo Hung-chih, it was too little, too late as the Lions closer calmly struck out two in the inning to preserve the win for reliever Fu Yu-kang.
Other than Kao’s four-hit effort that warranted the veteran catcher the game-MVP honor, four other Lions hitters had multi-hit games on the night, with Kao Guo-ching’s three-hit outing leading the way.
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