Danny Core pitched a heck of a game in Hsinchu on Tuesday night for the Brother Elephants with an 8-0 complete-game shutout over the Chinatrust Whales in an impeccable Taiwan debut.
The US right-hander out of the Toronto Blue Jays’ minor league system needed only 104 pitches to go the distance for his new team in a three-hit gem with five strikeouts and a walk to get the job done. With the help of a double play turned by his defense, Core faced a total of 30 batters in the game.
The series opener for the two teams featured a pair of foreign greats; Core for the home Elephants and staff ace Steve Watkins for the Whales. And Core clearly had the upper hand on the night with a brilliant outing, while fellow countryman Watkins was hit hard by an Elephants lineup that connected for eight runs (six earned) on seven hits, including a three-run home run by Chen Guan-ren over seven frames.
PHOTO: CHU PEI-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Chen Rei-cheng’s clutch double to deep-left off Watkins got the Elephants on the board in the bottom of the second for a 2-0 lead before Chen Guan-ren’s three-run blast two innings later made it 4-0 in the fourth.
Neither team scored over the next three innings, with Core and Watkins holding their ground until the Elephants opened the floodgates in the eighth with a bases-load, two-run single off Watkins that chased the Whales starter before Chen Huai-shan’s clutch single off Whales reliever Liu Yu-chang brought home two more runs in a four-run outburst to blow the game wide open at 8-0.
Watkins would end the night with the loss that set him back to 1-2 for the season as the Whales continued their recent slide by dropping six straight.
Wang Hsin-min’s 2-for-3 hitting off Core was the lone highlight for the marine creatures. It will be up to probable starter Shen Yu-jeh in tonight’s game in Taichung to see if they can break out of the slump.
Bulls 10, T-Rex 8 (Final 10th)
Chang “Prince of the Forest” Tai-shan’s RBI-single with men on first and second snapped an 8-all tie in the top of the 10th and the Sinon Bulls went on to defeat the dmedia T-Rex 10-8 in Taichung on Tuesday to end a two-game losing skid.
The classic seesaw battle between the two clubs that saw them swap leads more than three times had the visiting Bulls drawing first blood in the top of the second on Yeh Jung-chang’s RBI-single before the T-Rex answered with a pair of runs in the bottom of the same inning on Deng Shih-yang’s two-run strike that made it 2-1 in favor of the T-Rex.
The Bulls would tie the game up in the third reclaiming a 5-2 lead in the fifth with two runs in the fourth and another in the fifth, only to see the T-Rex close the gap in the bottom of the fifth with two runs to make it 5-4.
After the Bulls tacked on another run in the seventh to up their lead to a deuce, dmedia immediately responded with two runs in the bottom of the same inning to force the third tie of the night in a 6-6 draw.
Sinon would go ahead again in the top of the eighth on run-producing base hits by Su Jien-rong and Cheng Da-hong in what appeared to be the winning runs.
But that was not the case as the T-Rex rallied to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth against Bulls closer Lin Chi-wei and send it into extra innings.
Fortunately for the Bulls and Lin, Chang’s 10th-inning heroics promptly turned a blown save for the normally sure-handed closer into a surprising first win of the year.
Taking the loss for the T-Rex was reliever Chen Jia-hong, who entered in the ninth and retired the side in order before running into some trouble in the 10th en route to the tough defeat.
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