The resurgent Chinatrust Brothers racked up two wins in a row by sweeping the EDA Rhinos in their day-night doubleheader at the Taipei Tianmu Baseball Stadium yesterday to take the weekend series in Taipei.
Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min’s two-out single with runners at the corners broke a 2-2 deadlock in the bottom of the fifth for the Brothers as they held off the Rhinos to pick up their third win this month.
The Rhinos outhit the Brothers 9-6 in a game that they had plenty of chances to win.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung
Starter Cheng Kai-wen earned the win — which upped his season mark to a team-best 5-1 — with eight effective innings of two-run ball on eight hits. The former standout for the Hanshin Tigers of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball League pitched into and out of trouble on several occasions to keep the Rhinos off the scoreboard.
Taking the loss for the Rhinos was starter Huang Sheng-hsiung, who also pitched well with seven strong innings of play, but fell victim to a pair of unearned runs that ultimately cost him the win.
In the night game in Tianmu, Chou Si-chi’s two-run homer off Rhinos starter Freddy Garcia in the bottom of the first set the tone early in the game as the Brothers went on to blank the Rhinos 4-0.
Starter Chen Hung-wen pocketed his first career complete-game shutout win by going the distance on just 92 pitches for skipper Hsieh Chang-hen to become the first Brothers hurler to accomplish the feat in more than a year. The fireballer from Hualien struck out five while walking none in his best outing of the year so far.
Outshone by Chen, Garcia suffered his third setback of the season as he dropped to a 1-3 mark on a night in which he served up four runs on 10 hits over six innings of work.
MONKEYS 2, LIONS 2
The top-ranked Lamigo Monkeys played out a draw over 12 innings at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium last night to drop to three the number of wins they require to ensure the first-half title.
Huang Hao-ran’s clutch single got the road Monkeys on the board in the top of the fifth, before the Lions answered with Kuo Chun-yo’s solo blast in the bottom of the same inning, which made it 1-1.
The Lions went ahead with a run in the bottom of the sixth, only to see the Primates tie it at 2-2 in the eighth when Chan Chih-yao led off the inning with a double and scored on Kuo Yen-wen’s single to right to send the game into extra innings.
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
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