The Rakuten Monkeys are the early season leaders in Taiwanese professional baseball after they swept their three-game series against the Fubon Guardians with a 3-1 victory in Taoyuan last night, showing their opponents that they can win in a pitching duel.
The defending champions have sustained their form from last year’s Taiwan Series triumph, the Monkeys’ third consecutive Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) title, after starting the season with five wins from five games.
Rakuten manager Tseng Hao-chu started second-year right-hander Weng Wei-chun to close out the series. Veteran pitcher Henry Sosa of the Dominican Republic took the mound for the Guardians.
Photo: CNA
The Monkeys got a run in the first inning and Fubon in their second to make the score 1-1 early on, before Weng settled down to limit the Guardians’ batters, while his teammates scored in the fifth and seventh.
Weng was taken out to leave the final frames to three Rakuten relievers, who pitched two scoreless innings.
Fubon put two runners on base with two outs in the final inning amid some shaky relief pitching and were a clutch hit from a win, but Rakuten closer Chen Yu-hsun — who has a record of giving up late runs and gave fans some tense moments, not least when he walked the first batter he pitched to — threw some heat to strike out Fubon shortstop Lee Chung-hsien to end the game.
Photo: CNA
Sosa, a former Houston Astros player who has had four stints with South Korean teams, was tagged with the loss, giving up seven hits and yielding three runs, two of them earned. He has a 1-1 record after one week of the season.
The Monkeys have undergone a big transition after a change of management at the end of last year, with the owners of the Lamigo club, as it was known, sold to Japanese online retailing giant Rakuten Inc, which also owns the Sendai-based Rakuten Golden Eagles, who play in Nippon Professional Baseball’s Pacific League.
Former Monkeys’ manager Hong Yi-chung signed a three-year contract with the Guardians last year, leaving the job to Tseng Hao-chu.
However, Rakuten have shown their resilience with a three-game sweep of Hong’s new team after slugfests in the first two contests. Rakuten won 11-10 on Friday and 12-9 on Saturday.
The performance might have boosted Rakuten’s global standing, as Taiwan is apparently the only nation with professional baseball in play amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The games are being streamed to global audiences, with fans in the US and Japan, elsewhere in Asia and Europe able to watch.
International fans said in comments on social media that they are enjoying the games and thanked Taiwan for providing sports amid lockdowns in their nations.
Online polls and Twitter comments showed that most newcomers had become fans of the high-scoring Rakuten Monkeys, with the Brothers a distant second.
In Taichung, the Uni-President Lions defeated the Chinatrust Brothers Baseball Club 7-4 after grabbing three runs in the eighth frame.
With that key rally, on a two-run homer by outfielder Lin An-ke, Lions starter Shih Tzu-chien chalked up his first win of the season.
Jonas Vingegaard on Tuesday claimed the overall Vuelta a Espana lead while Jay Vine earned the stage 10 victory for his second triumph of the race. Two-time Tour de France winner Vingegaard overhauled Torstein Traen’s lead to head the general classification by 26 seconds from the Norwegian, with Joao Almeida third and trailing the Dane by 38 seconds. Vine put in an unmatchable performance on the final climb to finish ahead of Spanish Movistar riders Pablo Castrillo and Javier Romo. “Back in red, I’m happy with it, it’s a beautiful jersey,” Vingegaard said. “I’m happy with how the day went,
Australian Alex de Minaur reached the second week of the US Open for the third year in a row with little fanfare on Saturday and said he intended to keep winning until the tournament organizers were forced to give him better billing. Despite being the eighth seed and a quarter-finalist last year at Flushing Meadows, De Minaur’s third-round match against German Daniel Altmaier was scheduled for Court 17 — the smallest of the four stadium venues in the precinct. “It is a little bit of a headscratcher for me. I’m not gonna lie,” he told reporters after progressing 6-7 (9/7), 6-3, 6-4,
RIVALRY: Carlos Alcaraz lost his previous two matches against Serbia’s Novak Djokovic, in the Australian Open quarter-finals this year and Paris Olympics final last year Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz on Tuesday dazzled at the US Open to make the semi-finals before Novak Djokovic of Serbia danced his way through to book a New York showdown with the Spaniard that would mark the latest chapter in their generational rivalry. Former champion Alcaraz produced yet another entertaining display at Flushing Meadows to dismantle 20th seed Jiri Lehecka 6-4, 6-2, 6-4 at a sunbathed Arthur Ashe Stadium, securing his place in the last four without dropping a set this year. “Sometimes I play a shot that I should not play in that moment, but it’s the way I love
Spain are in danger of not getting out of EuroBasket Group C after losing 67-63 to Italy on Tuesday, but the defending champions still control their destiny. Marco Spissu put Italy in front for good at 64-63 with two free throws with 31 seconds left and made two more with 14 seconds remaining. Giampaolo Ricci converted one of two free throws with eight seconds on the clock. Spain, which in 2022 won their fourth title, are tied with Georgia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina at 2-2 each. Greece and Italy have clinched two of the group’s four spots in the round-of-16,
RSS