The Chinatrust Brothers avenged an embarrassing loss to the EDA Rhinos on Friday night, edging their foes in a 5-4 thriller at the Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium last night to even the weekend series at one win apiece.
Chen Hung-wen came out of the bullpen with two outs and the tying run on base in the top of the eighth for the Brothers — after the Rhinos had scored three straight to make it 5-4 — and struck out the next batter he faced to end the Rhinos’ scoring threat.
He followed that up with a brilliant one-two-three ninth to preserve the win for the league leaders.
“It was a big win for us, especially with a hot team like [the Rhinos]; [Chen] really bailed us out in the end,” Brothers manager Wu Fu-lien said after the game.
His troops needed a big outing from Chen and got just that from the ace closer to avenge Friday night’s 17-1 loss.
Chinatrust opened the contest yesterday with a quick run in the opening frame when Chang Cheng-wei led off the bottom of the inning with a single off Rhinos starter Gaby Hernandez, took third on a pick-off attempt to first that sailed wide and scored on Lin Wei-chu’s groundout to first.
Lin knocked in his second run of the game in the third with a two-out single before the Rhinos answered with a run of their own in the top of the fourth off Brothers starter Mike McClendon to make it 2-1.
The Brothers added to their lead with two runs in the fourth and another run in the fifth, which included a towering home run by Chen Chia-chui, only to see the Rhinos fight back with a three-run eighth on the back of three singles and a clutch double by Hu Chin-lung.
That was as close as they got with the Brothers bullpen stealing the show late to preserve the ninth win of the season for McClendon.
Taking the loss was Hernandez, who allowed five runs on eight hits over 4-2/3 innings to fall to 3-4 for the year.
MONKEYS 9, LIONS 7
The Lamigo Monkeys evened their series against the Uni-President Lions at one win each by topping the Cats at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium last night.
Lin Chih-sheng had a career night at the plate, going deep against the Lions pitching three times to drive in a career-high seven runs. Even though the Lions kept things close with a three-run eighth to make it a two-run game and nearly dampened Lin’s 200th career homer, the veteran slugger still had the final say.
Picking up his fourth win of the season was Lamigo starter Hsu Ming-chieh, who tossed 5-1/3 innings of four-run ball (two earned) on six hits, while the loss was charged to Wang Ching-ming, who gave up six runs on 10 hits, including two of Lin’s three blasts.
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