Tilson Brito hit his league-leading eighth homer of the season and Lin Yueh-ping tossed six innings of two-hit ball as the President Lions doubled up on the Chinatrust Whales 6-3 at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang on Friday night to end a two-game losing skid.
The defending home-run champ, who broke the league mark for most homers in a single season with 33 last year, became the fastest man to hit 50 homers in league history with a two-run shot to deep-center off Whales starter Du Chang-wei in the top of the first for his 50th blast in just 162 games (628 at-bats).
Taking the mound with authority for the Lions was fireballer Lin, who turned in his third quality start (defined as having allowed no more than three runs over at least six innings by a starter) in five chances with three runs (two earned) on a pair of hits over six frames to win his fifth game of the year.
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The contest began with the hitters getting the upper hand against both starters early with seven combined runs during a long first inning; four runs by the Lions offense off Du and three by the Whales off Lin, highlighted by Brito’s two-run blast.
The Lions added another run in the top of the second that chased Du to lead it 5-3, while Lin shook off his early wildness and retired 15 of the next 18 batters he faced to keep the Whales offense at bay.
After four relatively quiet innings, the Lions struck again in the seventh for their sixth run of the game to conclude the scoring for the game.
Suffering the loss for the Whales was Du, who one-and-a-third inning with five allowed runs on as many hits to remain winless at 0-3. He has lost 10 straight dating back to last season.
Bears 10, Bulls 4
Six first-inning runs by the La New offense set the tone early in the game, and they went on to defeat the Sinon Bulls 10-4 at the Hsinchu Municipal Baseball Stadium on Friday night in their first game of a rain-shortened week.
Huang “Easy” Long-yi made two plate appearances in a long top of the first that saw 10 Bears hitters come to bat as La New netted six runs on four singles, a double and a triple to lead it 6-0.
Even though the Bulls would get two of the runs back in the bottom of the third on back-to-back RBI-singles from Huang Chung-yi and Chen Chih-wei to make it 6-2, that was as close as they would come as the Bears poured in three more runs in the sixth on a two-run double by Chen Chin-fong and a run-scoring single by Lin Chih-sheng to claim a 9-2 lead.
They added another run in the eighth to break into double-digit scoring in a 10-2 game before the Bulls rallied for two meaningless runs in the ninth in the end.
Failure to come up with the timely hits ultimately cost the Bulls the game, as they only managed to knock in four runs on the 14 hits they collected compared with the Bears’ 10 on the 15 hits they rang up off the Bulls pitching.
Pocketing the win for the Bears was starter Andrew Loraine, who allowed two runs on 10 hits over seven innings with great defensive help to keep the damage to a minimum.
As for the hapless Bulls, Michael Connolly was charged with the loss for allowing the six early runs in the first for the Bears.
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