Nicholas Ungs tossed six effective innings of shutout ball in his Taiwan debut and Chen Chih-hong knocked in the game-winning run with a sacrifice fly in the bottom of fourth to pace the Brother Elephants to a 2-0 blanking of the Macoto Cobras in Sinjhuang on Monday night.
The American right-hander out of the University of Northern Iowa spent the past six seasons in the Florida Marlins minor league system and was signed by the Elephants last week. He scattered a base hit in every inning he pitched, but was able to get out of trouble each time before teammates Wang Jing-li and Todd Moser combined for three innings of scoreless relief to keep the shutout intact.
Offensively, the Elephants took advantage of a pair of walks issued by Cobras starter Andy Van Hekken and a run-scoring error by the Cobras defense in the fourth and scored what turned out to be the winning runs.
PHOTO: LIN CHENG-KUN, TAIPEI TIMES
Failure to come up with the timely hits cost the Cobras the game as they stranded nine on a night where they actually outhit the Elephants by a 9-7 margin.
It has been a rollercoaster ride for the Cobras and skipper Wu Fu-lien this season, who have gone from a first-half title to dead last in the standings in the second half with a dismal 15-28 record.
Pocketing the loss was Van Hekken, who fell to 1-3 for the year despite turning in his first complete game with two allowed runs (one earned) on five hits.
Bears 6, Bulls 2
The La New Bears kept their playoff hopes alive with a 6-2 win over the Sinon Bulls in Kaohsiung on Monday afternoon thanks to a pair of homeruns by leadoff man Huang "Easy" Long-yi and a sudden downpour in the bottom of the fifth that reduced the game to the minimum five innings.
The veteran outfielder single-handedly put the Bears ahead 3-0 over the first two innings with a leadoff blast off Bulls starter Lee Guo-ching in the bottom of the first before making it two in a row with a second-inning shot that scored the Bears' second and third runs of the game.
The Bears tacked on another run in the third, when Chen Chin-fong also went deep against Lee with his 26th round-tripper of the year to make it 4-0 before rounding out the scoring with a two-run fourth.
Trailing 0-6 after the fourth, the Bulls finally showed some signs of life in the fifth on Yu Hsien-ming's one-run single off Hsu Wen-hsiung with the bases loaded before a throwing error by the Bears defense led to their second run in a 6-2 game.
Doping fears prevented former US Open champion Emma Raducanu from treating insect bites on the eve of the Australian Open, she said, with players increasingly wary about ingesting contaminated substances. The British player was speaking in the wake of high-profile doping cases involving Iga Swiatak and Jannik Sinner. “I would say all of us are probably quite sensitive to what we take on board, what we use,” the 22-year-old said, recalling an incident on Friday. “I got really badly bitten by, I don’t know what, like ants, mosquitoes, something. I’m allergic, I guess,” she added. The bites “flared up and swelled up really a
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