The top-ranked Brother Elephants bounced back from a day-night doubleheader sweep on Saturday with a sound 4-1 victory over the Lamigo Monkeys at the Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium last night to avoid a series sweep over the weekend.
Starter Luis Gonzalez took a 4-0 shutout one out into the ninth before giving up an RBI single to the Monkeys’ Shih Chih-wei to score Chung “Yoyo Man” Cheng-yo who led the inning with a double.
In came Elephant closer Brad Thomas, who served up a single in ensuing play and issued a walk to load the bases before getting Chan Chih-yao to bounce a chopper back to the mound for the game-ending double play to preserve the win for Gonzalez.
The win not only helped avoid a series sweep for the men in the golden uniform, but more importantly ended a four-game losing streak as they added to their lead over the second-place Uni-President Lions by a full game in the standings, with the Cats suffering a loss to the Sinon Bulls in Taichung at the same time.
“That was a big win for us because we looked lost for a bit,” Elephant skipper Chen Rei-chen said after the game.
His troops had won a team-best 10 in a row to build a sizable lead over the Lions for the second half before dropping three of their last four (with the tie over the same span) to keep the Lions in title contention.
Doing the damage at the plate for the Elephants was Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-ming, who went one-for-three with a pair of RBIs to account for half of his team’s total run production. Also starring was Chou Si-chi, who went three-for-four with an RBI and scored twice on the night to lift his team past their nemeses from Taoyuan.
The Monkeys had several great scoring opportunities early in the game, with runners reaching safety in all but two of the first six innings, but failed to come up with the clutch hits necessary to produce any runs against Gonzalez, plating just one lone run from the seven hits and five walks on offense to lose this one in a hard way.
Bulls 4, Lions 1
The Sinon Bulls also avoided a series sweep over the weekend against the Uni-President Lions, with a 4-1 triumph over the first-half champs at the Sinjhuang Baseball Stadium in New Taipei City last night.
Rookie righty Lin Chen-hua took a three-hit shutout two outs into the eighth before allowing a run-scoring single to the Lions’ red-hot Pan “Take” Wu-hsiung that made it 3-1 in favor of the Bulls.
The Bulls returned the favor with an insurance run in the bottom of the same inning before closer Chen Huan-yang tossed a scoreless ninth to preserve the win for Lin.
Wang Hsin-min’s three-for-four hitting with two RBIs spearheaded a Sinon attack that dialed up 11 hits off the Lion pitching as they stampede over the battered Cats in a convincing manner.
‘AWFUL PERFORMANCE’: Golden State were always chasing the game after failing to threaten from long range, making just eight of 33 three-point attempts Aaron Gordon on Monday scored 38 points as the Denver Nuggets shrugged off the absence of Nikola Jokic to halt the Golden State Warriors’ seven-game winning streak with a 114-105 victory over their Western Conference rivals. A dazzling display from Gordon inspired what was ultimately a comfortable win for Denver, who were missing regular starters Jokic and Jamal Murray from their lineup. The absentees were barely felt by Denver, who startled the Warriors early at San Francisco’s Chase Center and led for most of the game. The Warriors threatened to stage a late rally after slashing the Nuggets’ fourth-quarter lead from 15 points
Barcelona’s Ferran Torres scored twice on Sunday to help secure a late 4-2 comeback win at Atletico Madrid in a pulsating La Liga clash that took the Catalan side back to the top of the table. Barca have 60 points and a game in hand after last week’s postponement of their home game with CA Osasuna. They are level on points with Real Madrid, who won 2-1 at Villarreal on Saturday. “I am happy and proud of this team,” Barcelona head coach Hansi Flick told a news conference. “They never give up... It’s a great three points and we are happy to
Chris Wood has fired Nottingham Forest into surprise UEFA Champions League contention and now the striker wants to score the goals to help New Zealand make history at the FIFA World Cup. New Zealand are strong favorites to qualify out of the Oceania region over the next week and reach the World Cup for only the third time. At the country’s two previous appearances at the finals, in 1982 and 2010, they have failed to win a match in six attempts. With Wood captaining the side and leading from the front, he told local media yesterday that the current squad can finally deliver
Paolo Banchero on Sunday scored 24 points as the Orlando Magic overturned a 13-point deficit to end the Cleveland Cavaliers’ 16-game unbeaten streak with a gutsy 108-103 road victory. Cleveland, the runaway Eastern Conference leaders, had looked poised to extend their franchise-record winning run after surging clear of Orlando early in the third quarter, but after a season where they have staged hefty winning comebacks of their own, the tables turned on Cleveland in the face of a furious burst of Orlando scoring. The Magic outscored Cleveland 35-23 in the third quarter, with Franz Wagner leading the charge with nine points and
RSS