The Lamigo Monkeys took advantage of a five-run seventh inning to take a 6-2 lead and held off a late-game rally by the EDA Rhinos to escape with a 7-5 win at the Chengcing Lake Baseball Field in Kaohsiung last night.
The win not only avenged a tough loss to the Rhinos the night before, but also evened out the weekend series for the defending champions as they look to clinch the three-game set with a win on the road in this afternoon’s series finale.
Jared Lansford became the league’s first 13-game winner by tossing seven-plus solid innings of four-run ball in a seven-hit effort despite falling behind early in the game. The US right-hander managed to keep the Rhino offense at bay just long enough for his offense to plate five to turn a 1-2 deficit into a 7-3 lead two batters into the eighth before being relieved.
Even though he would be charged with two runs in the eighth, the Monkeys bullpen was able to retain the lead as Huang Wei-sheng picked up two crucial outs with the tying run at the plate to keep it a two-run game after eight innings before the closer retired the side in a quick ninth to preserve the victory for Lansford.
“Our bullpen really shut [the Rhinos] down when we needed to the most, that was the difference in the game,” Monkeys manager Hung Yi-fong said after the game.
Offensively for the victors, Lan Ying-lung’s solo blast on a two-for-four night led an efficient lineup that plated seven on ten hits, with one of the runs scored charged against an error by the Rhino defense in the game-deciding seventh.
Rhinos starter Gabriel Hernandez threw four shutout innings of two-hit ball before serving up Lan’s solo shot in the top of the fifth and was pulled with a 2-1 lead after only 60 pitches. His successor, Huang Sheng-hsiung, cruised through a perfect sixth before running into a world of trouble that ended up costing Hernandez what would have been his fourth win of the year.
LIONS 6, BROTHERS 5
Deng Chih-wei’s two-out single with men on first and second scored the tiebreaking run in the top of the ninth as the Uni-President Lions rallied from one down in the ninth to edge past the top-ranked Chinatrust Brothers in a 6-5 thriller at the Taipei Tianmu Baseball Stadium last night.
Pan “TAKE” Wu-hsiung also came up big with four RBI’s on the night, including a three-run homer in the top of the eighth that tied the game at 4-4 and a clutch game-tying single in the ninth that made it 5-5 after the Brothers had scored a run in the bottom of the eighth to take a 5-4 lead.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
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