Tseng Chao-hao pitched eight-plus innings of one-hit ball, Kuo Yung-wei drove in a pair of runs on a 2-for-4 night as the last-place Lamigo Monkeys humbled the Uni-President Lions in a 4-0 shutout at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium last night to take the weekend series on the road.
It was by far Tseng’s best outing of the year as the veteran righty took a no-hitter into the ninth, before the Lions’ Liu Yu-cheng bounced a hard grounder just beyond the reach of a diving Kuo for the Cats’ first hit of the game, breaking up Tseng’s no-hit bid.
“It’s one of those games where you hope for [a no-hitter], but really don’t expect it,” Tseng said after the game.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
Even though he missed out on the no-hitter, he still pocketed the shutout victory and his first win of the year.
Lan Ying-lung’s solo homer off Lions starter Chiang Cheng-fong in the top of the first spotted Tseng a 1-0 lead.
The 1-0 lead soon became 2-0 in the fourth when Kuo Yen-wen also connected on a long ball off Chiang for his sixth round-tripper of the year.
Even though Chiang pitched the next three frames without giving up another run, the damage had already been done as the 2-0 score lasted deep into the contest with Tseng on top of his game before the Monkeys offense tacked on two more runs in the ninth to conclude the scoring.
Chiang suffered his second loss of the year, despite pitching seven solid innings of two-run ball on seven hits in a quality start.
RHINOS 6, BROTHERS 3
The EDA Rhinos took care of business in their visit to the Chinatrust Brothers last night as they topped the men in the golden uniforms at the Taipei Tianmu Baseball Stadium to take the series.
Freddy Garcia showed no signs of slowing down, taking a 4-1 lead two outs into the eighth before being pulled in his third straight quality start. The former Major League player has quietly won three in a row after dropping two earlier in the month to improve to 9-6 for the season. Other than a solo home run that he surrendered to Chen Tzu-hao in the fifth, he made sure every one of the three runs were hard-earned by the Lions.
Offensively for the Primates, four different players had multi-hit games, led by Lin Wei-ting’s 3-for-5 effort with an RBI.
Trailing by three with Garcia running up his pitch count, the Brothers managed to score twice in the eighth to make it 4-3.
That was as close as they got, as the Rhinos bullpen took over with 1-1/3 innings of shutout ball to preserve the win for Garcia.
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