Winless Taiwan suffered yet another devastating defeat in Group A play of this year’s IBAF Baseball World Cup, dropping a 15-1 decision in seven innings to the US at the Remon Cantera Stadium in Aguadulce, Panama, yesterday to fall to a 0-3 mark.
Poor pitching continued to hamper the Islanders’ quest for that elusive first victory in this year’s competition as starter Chen Kuan-ju lasted only 3-2/3 innings, with five runs allowed on as many hits despite pitching a scoreless first and second to start off the game.
The junior lefty out of Fu Jen Catholic University finally ran out of luck in the third by giving up a run on a single to Jordan Danks (minor leaguer for the Chicago White Sox), who scored one batter later on Jordy Mercer’s (minor leaguer for the Pittsburg Pirates) RBI double before serving up four more runs one out short of completing a shaky fourth.
Photo courtesy of Chinese Taipei Baseball Association
In came a generous Chen Kuan-yu (minor leaguer for Japan’s Yokohama Bay Stars), who not only failed to bail out his predecessor, but added fuel to the fire by serving up a three-run homer to A.J. Pollock (minor leaguer for the Arizona Diamondbacks), which made it 8-1 in favor of the US.
Chen Kuan-yu got into trouble in the fifth by serving up another long ball, this time a two-run shot to the US’ Tom Mendonca (minor leaguer for the Texas Rangers) before giving up his third homer of the game to Matt Clark (minor leaguer for the San Diego Padres), which finally ended a long night for the Taiwan.
Chen was charged with nine of the 15 runs by the Americans in the game, four of which were unearned.
“We were really dealing with a lineup of would-be big leaguers, as far as I was concerned, and that made things even tougher on our pitching,” Taiwan skipper Chen Wei-cheng said after the game.
Most of the players on the US squad were indeed from the AAA level; just a call-up away from playing in the Major League.
Nine of the dozen hits by the Americans went for extra bases with four homers and five doubles, humbling a Taiwan pitching staff that really had not gotten on track thus far.
Offensively for Taiwan, Lin Han’s timely single in the bottom of the third that scored the only run for his team kept Taiwan from being shutout in the game. Lo Kuo-hui’s (minor leaguer for the Seattle Mariners) 2-for-3 hitting was the other spotlight as it accounted for half of the total hits that the Taiwan hitters managed against the stellar pitching of US starter Andy Van Hekken (former Detroit Tiger), who allowed a run on four hits over six innings to beat Chen Kuan-ju for the win.
Taiwan will get some much needed rest on an off day today before taking on a strong Canadian squad that won all three of their games through last night in a must-win situation tomorrow. Opening pitch is scheduled for 7:30pm at the Remon Cantera Stadium.
In other play, it was:
‧ The Netherlands 5, Japan 2
‧ Panama 4, Puerto Rico 2
‧ Canada 12, Greece 2
‧ South Korea 8, Australia 0
‧ Italy 6, Nicaragua 3
‧ Dominican Republic 13,
Germany 2
‧ Cuba 14, Venezuela 2
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