The Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions tied the best-of-seven Taiwan Series at a game apiece on Sunday with a 10-3 victory over the CTBC Brothers before another sellout crowd at the Taipei Dome.
The Brothers took an early lead in Game 2 of the championship series of Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) when outfielder Yueh Cheng-Hua hit a solo homer in the bottom of the first off Lions starter Mario Sanchez.
The Lions answered with four runs on six hits in the top of the second against Brothers starter Daniel Mengden, but the Brothers seemed determined to keep the game close when they scored two runs in the bottom of the inning to pull to within 4-3.
Photo: CNA
However, Mengden struggled to keep the Lions in check, yielding a run in both the fourth and fifth innings before being taken out of the game after finishing the fifth.
In his five innings, the American gave up six-runs, four of them earned, on 10 hits in a 98-pitch outing.
It was an uncharacteristic off-night for the 31-year-old, who had been 4-0 with a 2.60 ERA in the Taipei Dome this season. He had the best record in the indoor stadium of any CPBL pitcher this year.
Photo: CNA
Down 6-3, the Brothers tried to stop the bleeding by calling on five relievers over the final four innings, but they gave up four more runs, including three in the top of the eighth, that sealed the Lions’ victory.
Lions starter Sanchez, who had a league-high 14 wins, went 5 2/3 innings and blanked the Brothers after yielding three runs in the first two innings.
Relievers Hector Perez from the Dominican Republic and Chen Yun-wen allowed only one hit over the final 3 1/3 innings, stifling any Brothers chance at a comeback.
Photo: CNA
Uni-Lions manager Lin Yueh-ping lauded his players’ capability to maximize their ability to make solid contact at the plate, which he said was more important than taking big swings in a short series.
Meanwhile, Brothers manager Keiichi Hirano praised Sanchez for his solid outing, calling him the Lions’ “best pitcher,” while also lamenting his team’s inability to take advantage of the limited scoring chances they had.
Before Sunday’s game began, the two teams and the 37,596 fans in attendance honored late Taiwanese national team manager Lee Lai-fa, who passed away on Wednesday last week at the age of 68 due to liver cancer.
A veteran baseball player and later coach, Lee was most famous for managing Taiwan’s men’s national baseball team to a silver medal showing at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
Meanwhile, Uni-Lions manager Lin said earlier on Sunday that it remained “questionable” whether the team’s ace and starter in the Taiwan Series opener Gu Lin Ruei-yang would pitch again in the series.
Gu Lin threw three scoreless innings before he was taken out due to back tightness on Saturday.
Lin said Gu Lin would not throw Sunday and yesterday before the team re-evaluates his status.
Both teams had an off-day yesterday before returning to the Taipei Dome for Game 3 today.
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