In a highly anticipated battle between two perennial powerhouses, the Brother Elephants will take on the Sinon Bulls in this year’s Taiwan Series, which is scheduled to start at the Intercontinental Baseball Stadium in Taichung on Saturday afternoon.
Unlike the past several seasons in which a playoff series between the No. 2 and No. 3 team precedes the annual Fall Classic, the 2010 Taiwan Series will feature the first-half champs, the Bulls, and a resurging Elephants squad that won the second-half title by a whopping six-game margin over the Uni-President Lions.
The success of the Elephants’ foreign starting trio consisting of Carlos Castillo, Orlando Roman and Jim Magrane, all of whom have won at least eleven games during the regular season, is undoubtedly the main reason that the men in the familiar golden uniform are back in the title hunt, while the Bulls have relied more on their bats to get the job done with sluggers Chang Tai-shan (batting .313 with 78 RBIs) and Lin Yi-chuan (batting .330 with 55 RBIs) in their lineup.
With the emphasis on starting pitching, Brother skipper Chen Rei-chen has been forced to leave his ace closer Ryan Cullen off the postseason roster since each team is allowed to carry only three foreign players on the 28-man roster. This means that Chen will miss Cullen and his league-best 34 saves during the regular season, a luxury that the Elephants have seemingly taken for granted.
“With the series possibly -going to Game Seven, we need all the starting pitching help we can get, that’s why we had to make that decision [of leaving Cullen off the roster],” Chen said earlier this week.
Chen is hoping that his three foreign starters will give him at least seven good innings in each start to take some pressure off of a bullpen that has been shaky at best.
Offensively for the Elephants, Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min and his league-leading .357 batting average will have to come through in a big way against the Sinon pitching since he is the lone Elephants hitter with a .300+ batting average.
Heading the Sinon starting rotation will be Japanese righty Shoda Itsuki, who won 11 games in his own right during the regular season to complement Comeback-Player-of-the-Year candidate Yang Jien-fu and his 11 wins.
The Bulls do have a legitimate No. 3 starter in Lin Ying-jeh, who has won two straight since a mid-season slump that left him winless for nearly two months. His ability to hold his ground could be the difference in the series.
Should the outcome of the game hinge on relief pitching, the scale would definitely tip in favor of the Bulls with lefty Shen Yu-jeh and rookie sensation Chang Geng-hao enjoying an advantage over their counterparts Yeh Yong-jeh and Tseng Yong-da, who have served mostly as the setup men for Cullen, but will likely be asked to close out the games with Cullen being off the roster. It would a long series for the Elephants if their starters cannot last late into the game.
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