Pan "Du Du" Wei-luen made it look easy against the Brother Elephants in Sinjhuang on Saturday night with a two-hit effort in 6 1/3 scoreless innings before the President Lions bullpen chipped in with 2 1/3 innings of solid relief to keep the 13-0 shutout intact.
The Lions' resident ace earned his 14th win of the season with a fastball clocked at higher than 140kph, which made his offspeed pitches even harder than usual to handle for the Elephants hitters.
The Lions got off to a quick start, scoring seven first-inning runs off Elephants rookie starter Yeh Yong-jeh on four singles, a double, and a three-run homer by Liu Fu-hao.
PHOTO: LIN CHENG-KUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The Lions would extend their 7-0 advantage by one in the second on outfielder Kuo Dai-chi's solo blast to deep right before they tacked on a pair of runs in the third and fourth to build a commanding 12-0 lead after the fourth inning.
Limited by Pan's outstanding performance, the Elephants offense reached second base only twice. Chen Guan-ren had a double in the first and Chen "the Golden Warrior" Chih-yuan had one in the fourth.
Offensively for the big cats, Liu's 2-for-3 hitting with a season-high four RBIs for the night led an attack that teed off against four different Elephants pitchers for a total of 17 base hits.
Four other Lions players enjoyed multi-hit games besides Liu, with Dominican slugger Tilson Brito's three-hit outing topping the list.
"I guess the ball looked bigger than a grapefruit to us tonight," Liu said after the game.
Yeh took the loss, dropping to 4-8 for the year and allowing 10 runs, all earned, on eleven hits and a pair walks in three long innings of work.
The win helped the Lions keep their full-game lead over the Sinon Bulls in the race for home-field advantage during the upcoming postseason series between the two clubs. Two games remain in the regular season. Another loss by the Bulls or another win by the Lions would clinch the home-field advantage for the Lions in the best-of-five first-round playoff action.
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