Kobayashi Ryokan extended his recent winning streak to five straight by holding off the dmedia T-Rex to a lone run over seven solid innings, leading the Brother Elephants to a 7-1 win at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang on Thursday night.
The Japanese right-hander, who started off his year with back-to-back losses, has come around with seven quality starts to nail five straight victories while watching his ERA dip to a team-best 2.46.
Doing the damage with his bat for the men in the golden uniforms was Chen “Golden Warrior” Chih-yuan, who went 4-for-5 with a pair of RBIs to back up Kobayashi in the Elephants’ final meeting against dmedia for the first half of the season.
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The contest began with neither offense being able to produce much over the first couple of innings, until the Golden Warrior’s RBI-single to deep-right off T-Rex starter Chen JIa-hong put the Elephants ahead 1-0 in the top of the third.
The Elephants tacked on three more runs each in the fourth and fifth with some timely hitting and poor defense by the T-Rex to lead it 7-0 by the end of the fifth.
Napoleon Calzado’s bouncer to short with men on second and third finally got the T-Rex on the board in the bottom of the sixth as dmedia avoided its second shutout of the season with their lone run in the game. But that was as close as they got to Kobayashi and the relief corps of the Elephants as Todd Moser and Chuang Wei-chuan chipped in a scoreless eighth and ninth respectively to prevent the T-Rex from plating any more runs on the night.
Suffering the loss for the T-Rex was Chen Jia-hong, who was pulled after three decent innings with an unearned run on three hits in as many innings to remain winless at 0-5 for the season.
The game would have been a lot closer if it had not been for the T-Rex’s season-high five errors in the game, which led to four unearned runs for the Elephants.
Whales vs Bulls
The scheduled contest between the Chinatrust Whales and the Sinon Bulls at the Taichung Municipal Baseball Stadium was rained out and postponed until Monday.
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