Saving the best for last, the Brother Elephants humbled the Uni-President Lions 4-0 at the Sinjhuang Baseball Stadium in New Taipei City last night to close out the regular season with a bang.
Even though the men in the golden uniforms will not be playing in the post-season with the matchup for the upcoming Taiwan Series already set between the Lions and the Lamigo Monkeys, it was still a nice victory for them as they now head into the off-season on a positive note.
“[The victory] is very important for us because it will give us something to build on,” Brother Elephants skipper Chen Rei-chen said after the game.
His troops held leads as large as six games for a good part of the second half of the season, before they faltered in a mediocre spell last month (11-10) to miss out on the post-season by 3.5 games.
STELLAR PITCHING
Neither offense was able to cross the plate against the stellar starting pitching of Yuya Kamada of the Lions and Tseng Song-wei of the Elephants, who put zeros on the scoreboard through to the sixth inning in a classic pitchers’ duel.
However, that changed in a heartbeat when the Elephants finally came through with an RBI double by Cheng Nai-wen against his former team to give them a 1-0 lead, before Huang Jun-sheng’s two-run blast ultimately put the Brother Elephants 4-0 ahead in the bottom of the seventh.
That was all the offense the Elephants needed as Chen brought on Yeh Yong-jeh in the eighth inning to record the next five outs and set up a save opportunity for closer Brad Thomas, who got the final out on a grounder to short to strand a pair of runners in the bottom of the ninth for his league-best 23rd save of the year.
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