Sinon Bulls' decisive 8-1 victory over the Brother Elephants Monday night kept the Bulls' title hopes alive as they trail behing the leaders, the President Lions, by three games in Taiwan's Chinese Professional Baseball League standings with three games left to play in the first half of the CPBL season.
Even Elephant side-armer Wu "the Bull Killer" Jung-yi (
The Bulls later teed off against Elephants reliever Hsiao Ren-wen (
Starting lefty Ho Chi-shien (
He held the heart of the Elephants order to a combined 2-for-12 night while fanning four in his best performance of the season by far.
a whale of a game
Tuesday night's series opener between the Chinatrust Whales and the La New Bears did not have any bearing as far as the first-half title race, but the two squads treated Chiayi fans to a 5-4 nail-biter in favor of the Whales.
The Whales jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first following a sharp ground ball by cleanup man Chen Jien-wei (
They then quickly lost their advatage as the Bears scored a run in the second, third, and fourth innings to take a 3-1 lead.
Whales slugger Huang Kwei-yu (
The Bears would close the gap to 5-4 in the sixth inning with designated hitter Tsai Hung-tseh's (
Former Major Leaguer Dan Harriger of the US yielded a run on six hits in eight steady innings en route to his first win of the season with the Whales.
Upcoming Games
With the first-half title still up for grabs, a pair of three-game series between the Lions and the Bulls and the Macoto Cobras and the Elephants this week will determine which club will take home the title.
The second-place Elephants need to sweep the serpents and hope for the Bulls to do the same against the big cats in order to win the first half.
The odds, of course, are against such sweeps taking place.
The Lions haven't been swept in a series all season long, which means the Elephants are likely to end up being only the third team in 13 years of Taiwan professional baseball history to fail to win the first half despite being the first team to reach the 20-game-win plateau.
The Lions can wrap up the first half with a tie or better in their three-game series against the Bulls for the right to play in the postseason, something they had missed for the past two seasons.
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