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.
The Rakuten Monkeys on Sunday downed the CTBC Brothers 2-1, handing the hosts their second consecutive loss in the best-of-seven CPBL Taiwan Series at the Taipei Dome. Monkeys’ ace starter Pedro Fernandez of the Dominican Republic dominated on the mound, cruising through six scoreless innings before giving up a run on a wild pitch in the bottom of the seventh inning. He gave up only three hits and walked two batters in a 93-pitch outing, giving his Taoyuan-based team an edge. Offensively, the Monkeys’ leadoff batter Lin Li hit Brothers starter Brandon Leibrandt’s pitch over the center-field wall in the game’s first at-bat,
Rafael Leao on Sunday shot AC Milan to the top of Serie A with a brace in a 2-1 win over ACF Fiorentina who were enraged by the “scandalous” awarding of the penalty that decided the game. Portugal winger Leao pushed Milan one point ahead of local rivals Inter, SSC Napoli and AS Roma with a coolly taken spot-kick, given for what looked like a soft foul on Santiago Gimenez by Fabiano Parisi, with four minutes remaining. That goal capped a fine first league start of the season for Leao and came after he drew the hosts level with a brilliantly struck
The tiny village club of Mjallby AIF on Monday won the top tier Swedish soccer league with a 2-0 away win at IFK Gothenburg, sealing the title with three rounds of matches remaining. Jacob Bergstrom and Tom Pettersson scored the goals in Mjallby’s 20th win in 27 league games. Mjallby has a population of fewer than 1,400 people and plays in an outdated 6,000-seat stadium with stands weathered by the winds of the Baltic Sea. “It’s a huge relief to experience this now, a relief with three games to go,” said Anders Torstensson, a former army officer and secondary-school teacher who coaches the
Jahmyr Gibbs was offered oxygen on the bench after a 78-yard run. He turned it down. Clearly, he was not out of breath. Gibbs on Monday scored on a long sprint in the second quarter, a five-yard spinning plunge in the third and accounted for a career-high 218 yards from the scrimmage to lead the Detroit Lions in a 24-9 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “You felt like this was coming,” Detroit coach Dan Campbell said. “This has been building.” The Lions (5-2) bounced back from a loss as they have done flawlessly for nearly three years, extending their NFL-long streak of 51 games
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