Chen Chun-hui’s two-run homer capped a five-run fifth that turned a 2-3 deficit into a 7-3 lead as the Uni-President Lions went on to double up the EDA Rhinos 10-5 at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium last night to clinch the weekend series by a 2-1 margin.
It was the second straight high-scoring affair for the home Cats following their 21-1 slaughtering of the Rhinos the night before to give them a whopping total of 31 runs over a 30-hour span.
Chen’s three-hit effort would lead a sextet of Lions players who had multi-hit games on the night against a baffled Rhinos pitching staff that served up 19 hits.
Starter David Purcey took a 2-0 lead into the top of the fourth before giving up three in the inning to fall behind by one run. He was pulled one out into the fifth to miss the five-inning minimum for a starter to qualify for the win by two outs as the honor went to his successor, Lin Chi-wei, who retired all five of the batters he faced to pick up his first “W” of the season.
Trailing by four, the Rhinos managed to pull within two of the Cats by plating two in the top of the seventh, when Kao Kuo-hui homered off reliever Fu Yu-kang before Lin Kuen-sheng drew a bases-loaded walk off Kuo Hung-chih that made it 7-5.
That was as close as EDA got as the Lions would put up three unanswered runs over the next two frames to put the game away.
Tagged with the loss was reliever Chen Huan-yang, who was charged for all of the five runs scored by the Lions in the game-turning fifth for his first setback of the year.
MONKEYS 15, BROTHERS 4
In Taoyuan, the Lamigo Monkeys also had the final laugh by humbling the Chinatrust Brothers in a 15-4 blowout last night to sweep the three-game home stand against the men in the golden uniforms at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium.
Lin “Chubby Kid” Hung-yu’s three-run blast off Brothers starter Bobby Blevins highlighted a six-run third that broke a 4-all tie wide open, right after the Brothers had scored three in the top of the inning to erase an early 4-1 lead by the Primates.
Lamigo would tack on five more runs while blanking the visitors from the fourth inning on to coast to their fourth straight win.
Tseng Meng-cheng (formerly Tseng Chao-hao) was credited with his first win of the season for allowing four runs on nine hits over five innings to beat his counterpart Blevins, who dropped to 2-3 for the year in a losing cause.
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