The Lamigo Monkeys took advantage of a five-run seventh inning to take a 6-2 lead and held off a late-game rally by the EDA Rhinos to escape with a 7-5 win at the Chengcing Lake Baseball Field in Kaohsiung last night.
The win not only avenged a tough loss to the Rhinos the night before, but also evened out the weekend series for the defending champions as they look to clinch the three-game set with a win on the road in this afternoon’s series finale.
Jared Lansford became the league’s first 13-game winner by tossing seven-plus solid innings of four-run ball in a seven-hit effort despite falling behind early in the game. The US right-hander managed to keep the Rhino offense at bay just long enough for his offense to plate five to turn a 1-2 deficit into a 7-3 lead two batters into the eighth before being relieved.
Even though he would be charged with two runs in the eighth, the Monkeys bullpen was able to retain the lead as Huang Wei-sheng picked up two crucial outs with the tying run at the plate to keep it a two-run game after eight innings before the closer retired the side in a quick ninth to preserve the victory for Lansford.
“Our bullpen really shut [the Rhinos] down when we needed to the most, that was the difference in the game,” Monkeys manager Hung Yi-fong said after the game.
Offensively for the victors, Lan Ying-lung’s solo blast on a two-for-four night led an efficient lineup that plated seven on ten hits, with one of the runs scored charged against an error by the Rhino defense in the game-deciding seventh.
Rhinos starter Gabriel Hernandez threw four shutout innings of two-hit ball before serving up Lan’s solo shot in the top of the fifth and was pulled with a 2-1 lead after only 60 pitches. His successor, Huang Sheng-hsiung, cruised through a perfect sixth before running into a world of trouble that ended up costing Hernandez what would have been his fourth win of the year.
LIONS 6, BROTHERS 5
Deng Chih-wei’s two-out single with men on first and second scored the tiebreaking run in the top of the ninth as the Uni-President Lions rallied from one down in the ninth to edge past the top-ranked Chinatrust Brothers in a 6-5 thriller at the Taipei Tianmu Baseball Stadium last night.
Pan “TAKE” Wu-hsiung also came up big with four RBI’s on the night, including a three-run homer in the top of the eighth that tied the game at 4-4 and a clutch game-tying single in the ninth that made it 5-5 after the Brothers had scored a run in the bottom of the eighth to take a 5-4 lead.
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