Yang Jien-fu threw five-and-one-third scoreless innings of four-hit ball to propel the Sinon Bulls over the La New Bears in a 2-0 shutout in Taichung on Tuesday night to snap a three-game losing skid.
The former Taiwan Series MVP, who had been bothered by a series of nagging injuries all season long, seemed to have broken out of a mid-season slump by winning his third straight start to improve to a 6-10 record for the year.
Cheng Hong-dah led off the game with a standup double off Bears starter Tsai Ying-fong and scored two batters later on Chang Jien-ming's RBI groundout to third to give the home Bull a quick 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first.
Neither club would score again over the next four innings against the solid pitching of Yang and Tsai until the Bulls broke through in the sixth on Chen Chih-wei's one-run single that made it 2-0 in favor of the Bulls.
That was more than ample for Yang and his bullpen mates as they allowed just two Bears hitters to reach scoring position all night long to keep the shutout intact.
Timely hitting by the Bulls was the difference in the game as the Bears also managed match their nemeses with five hits in the game, even though none had come with runners in scoring position.
Pocketing the tough loss for the Bears was Tsai, whose solid return to the starting rotation from his usual closer's role was overshadowed by Yang's stellar performance as he fell to 1-3 for the year.
Elephants 11, Cobras 3
Scoring early and often, the Brother Elephants trounced the Macoto Cobras by an 11-3 final in a wet Hsinchu City Stadium on Tuesday evening for their third win in four games.
The Elephants jumped to a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first on Chen "Golden Warrior" Chih-yuan's one-run single to left before doubling their lead in the third with Chen Rei-cheng's opposite-field single that was good for another RBI.
The Elephants would continue to challenge the Cobras pitching by striking for three more runs in the fourth, highlighted by Huang Cheng-wei's tow-run single up the middle, to take a 5-0 lead before the Cobras finally answered with three runs on homers by Kao Wei and Chen Yuan-jia in the sixth to make it 5-3.
That was as close as they got with the Elephants scoring the final six runs of the game off three different Cobras relievers, capped by Chen Huai-shan's two-run blast off Lin Hsao-kai in the eighth to win it by eight in the eventual 11-3 final.
All nine of the Elephants starters connected for at least a hit on the night, led by Huang's 2-for-4 effort with a pair of RBIs.
Fan favorite Peng "Chia Chia" Cheng-min also belted a monstrous homer to right in the bottom of the fifth for his team-best 18th long ball of the season.
Joey Dawley was credited with his eighth win of the year for holding a potent Cobras lineup to just three runs on four this in six-and-two-thirds innings of work.
He struck out five and walked only one to up his league-high strikeout total to 126, nine more than fellow US lefty Gary Rath of the Bears.
Suffering the loss on behalf of the Cobras was newcomer Carlos Castillo of the US, whose Taiwan debut was less than impressive as the former major leaguer allowed six runs on 10 hits over five bumpy innings in a losing cause.
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