The last-placed Lamigo Monkeys continued to live on the edge, beating the top-ranked EDA Rhinos on the road in a 4-3 final at the Cheng Ching Lake Baseball Stadium in Greater Kaohsiung last night to win the weekend series.
Similar to their game the night before, in which they rallied from three down to top the league-leaders, the Primates found themselves trailing the home Rhinos 0-2 after one inning of play in which Lin Yi-chuan and Kao Guo-hui connected for a pair of RBI hits off Lamigo starter Lin Bo-yo.
However, rather than waiting until the late innings to get the runs back, the Monkeys needed less than an inning to take the lead as they exploded for a pair of singles and a double off Rhino starter Freddy Garcia in a four-run second inning to take a 4-2 lead.
That was all the runs that either offense plated over the next six innings, with Lin Bo-yo and Garcia holding their ground to keep the scoring gate closed.
The Rhinos finally broke through against the Lamigo bullpen when Yang Guan-wei homered off closer Miguel Mejia to bring his team to within a run of the Monkeys.
However, with the tying run on board, Mejia was able to get the Rhinos’ Cheng Chao-han to ground to second for a game-ending double play.
Picking up the win was Lin Bo-yo, who improved to 4-3 for the year with two allowed runs on six hits, while Garcia was charged with his fifth loss of the season.
The former major league player allowed four runs on eight hits in eight innings of work.
BROTHERS 5, LIONS 3
The Chinatrust Brothers bounced back from a pair of losses with a 5-3 win over the Uni-President Lions at the Taipei Tianmu Baseball Stadium last night to avoid being swept in the three-game set.
Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min’s two-run homer off Lions reliever Fu Yu-kang capped a three-run seventh that broke a 2-all tie wide open.
Even though the Lions got a run back in the eighth on the merit of Lin Chih-hsiang’s RBI single off Brothers closer Brad Thomas, that was as close as they got, as Thomas struck out Liu Yu-chen to leave the bases loaded in the eighth, before retiring the side in order in the ninth to preserve the win for starter Lin Yu-ching.
Bologna on Thursday advanced past Empoli to reach their first Coppa Italia final in more than half a century. Thijs Dallinga’s 87th-minute header earned Bologna a 2-1 win and his side advanced 5-1 on aggregate. Giovanni Fabbian opened the scoring for Bologna with a header seven minutes in. Then Viktor Kovalenko equalized for Empoli in the 30th minute by turning in a rebound to finish off a counterattack. Bologna won the first leg 3-0. In the May 14 final in Rome, Bologna are to face AC Milan, who eliminated city rivals Inter 4-1 on aggregate following a 3-0 win on Wednesday. Bologna last reached the
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Inter’s defense of their Italian Serie A title was hit with a setback on Sunday as they lost 1-0 at home to AS Roma, while Scott McTominay netted a brace as SSC Napoli beat Torino 2-0 to go top of the table. No fixtures were played on Friday or Saturday because of the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome, meaning the full round of Serie A matches took place on Sunday and yesterday. Matias Soule’s first-half strike for Roma knocked Inter off top spot earlier in the day before new Napoli opened up a three-point buffer with victory in Sunday’s
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