The top-ranked Lamigo Monkeys bounced back from a minor slump over the past week with a 9-6 victory over the Uni-President Lions at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium last night to close the weekend with a 1-1-1 record.
The win marked just the Primates’ second win in their past seven outings as they widened their lead over the second-placed Lions to four games, while reducing the magic number to clinch the first-half title to three wins.
Lin “Chubby Kid” Hung-yu greeted the Cats with his 60th career homer, drilling an offering from Lions starter Pan “Du Du” Wei-luen over the right-centerfield wall for his third blast in the past four games to give his team a 4-0 lead in the top of the third.
Photo: Huang Chih-yuan, Taipei Times
That wasn’t all the Primates collected off Du Du, who lasted only one out into the third in his shortest outing of the season, as they tacked on a pair more runs in the same inning to chase the veteran right-hander. Pan was charged for all six runs that the Monkeys scored on five hits, even though only three of them were earned.
Trailing by six, the Cats got two of the runs back in the bottom of the fourth when Kao “Green Tank” Guo-ching homered off Monkeys starter Roydrick Merritt with a runner to make it 6-2.
After the Monkeys plated one more run in the sixth that made it 7-2, the Lions managed to score the next four runs to fall within one in the bottom of the seventh and they would have tied the game if it had not been for a 1-2-3 inning-ending double play by the Monkeys’ defense with the bases loaded that kept it 7-6.
That was as close as the Lions got as the Monkeys put up a run each in the eighth and ninth against the Lions bullpen, before closer Miguel Mejia tossed a scoreless ninth.
Four batters had multihit games on the night for the Monkeys, led by Yu Teh-lung and Lin Chih-ping’s three-hit efforts.
The Green Tank had a career-best day at the plate for the Lions with four hits and as many RBIs, even though his team lost.
RHINOS V BROTHERS POSTPONED
A steady downpour forced officials to call off the contest between the EDA Rhinos and the Chinatrust Brothers at the Taipei Tianmu Baseball Stadium yesterday afternoon.
The two teams are due to play the game in Tianmu on June 21.
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