The EDA Rhinos cashed in on a tremendous start, including five early runs, to defeat the top-ranked Chinatrust Brothers 6-2 at the Cheng Ching Lake Baseball Stadium in Kaohsiung last night for their fourth straight win.
Lin Yi-chuan’s sacrifice fly with runners on second and third, followed by Cheng Da-hung’s RBI single got the hosts on the board in the opening frame before they added three more runs in the second with three singles and a run-scoring error by the Chinatrust defense to spot starter Andy Sisco a quick 5-0 lead after two innings.
WILD PITCH
Sisco, who cruised through the third with relative ease, surrendered his first run of the game in the fourth on a two-out wild pitch with a runner on third.
He was the beneficiary of a great gun-down at the plate in what could have been a big inning for the Brothers.
Trailing 5-1, Chinatrust managed to score another run off Sisco in the fifth when Chang Cheng-wei doubled off the Rhinos starter and took third and home on two wild pitches to make it 5-2.
That was as close as the Brothers got, with Sisco tossing a perfect sixth and seventh before his bullpen teammates Lin Yi-hao and Gaby Hernandez split a perfect eighth and ninth to record their sixth win of the year for Sisco in a five-hit gem.
LEAGUE-BEST AVERAGE
Offensively for the Rhinos, Hu Chin-lung drove in two with a homer on a one-for-three outing to maintain his league-best average of .383, one point better than the Lamigo Monkeys’ Lin Chih-sheng’s .382, as the race for the batting title heats up over the final week of the regular season.
Taking the loss was Chinatrust starter Wang Tzu-an, who allowed five runs — four earned — on seven hits over four innings to fall to a 2-5 mark for the season.
Next up for the Rhinos are the last-placed Uni-President Lions, who are to visit the Rhinos in Kaohsiung, while the Brothers host the Monkeys in a showdown between the top two squads in the league at the Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium, where a win by the Primates would cut the Brothers’ lead to three games with six games remaining in the regular season.
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