Powered by Lin Che-hsuen’s grand slam on a three-hit night, the EDA Rhinos trounced the Lamigo Monkeys 17-7 in a road victory at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium last night to even the weekend series at one win apiece.
The Rhinos’ mid-season top draft pick earned every penny of his paycheck by smacking an offering from Monkeys starter Jared Lansford over the centerfield wall to plate four in what turned out to be a seven-run second, setting the tone early.
The Rhinos never looked back in a slugfest against the Monkeys’ pitching.
Photo: Chen Chi-chu, Taipei Times
Also starring was Kao Kuo-hui, who lifted his league-leading home run total to 25 with a towering two-run shot to deep left to claim a five-homer lead over the Monkeys’ Lin Chih-sheng.
By the time all was said and done, the Rhinos had tallied 24 hits to humble the hosts, who found themselves in unfamiliar territory, as they are usually the ones delivering the blows on the offensive side of the ball instead of being on the receiving end of such a brutal beating.
What should have been an evenly matched contest between two offense-oriented squads became an all-Rhinos affair by the end of the second, despite the Monkeys having the league’s first 12-game winner Lansford on the mound.
“[The Rhinos] were hitting everything under the sun; it did not matter who was pitching to them,” Monkeys skipper Hung Yi-fong said after the game.
His staff ace was pulled just one out into the fourth after giving up 10 runs on 11 hits in his shortest outing of the season.
Even though eight of the 10 runs were unearned, with the Monkeys defense committing three errors early in the game, the contest was clearly won long before the final out was recorded.
Picking up the win was Rhinos starter Tsai Ming-chin, who allowed five runs on 11 hits in 6-2/3 innings of work to improve to 5-3 for the year.
BROTHERS 1, LIONS 11
The Uni-President Lions made it two wins in a row against the top-ranked Chinatrust Brothers by smothering the men in the golden uniforms at the Taipei Tianmu Baseball Stadium.
The win not only gave the Cats the edge in the weekend’s three-game set, but also cut the Brothers’ lead in the standings to a lone game over Uni-President.
The Lions will be looking to erase the deficit with a win this afternoon, which would see them sweep the series.
Two quick runs in the opening frame courtesy of back-to-back RBI swings with two outs by Kao Kuo-ching and Chen Yung-chee gave the home Cats a 2-0 lead, which was more than ample with starter and game-MVP Justin Thomas tossing one-run ball over seven innings to register win No. 5 for the American southpaw.
Five different Lions players had multi-hit nights, with Chen driving in two runs with a pair of base hits to his credit.
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