Back-to-back homers by Kuo Dai-yong led to seven unanswered runs for the Chinatrust Whales as they trounced the La New Bears 7-1 at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang on Tuesday to kick off the week with a splash.
It was the first time that the speedy outfielder had gone deep more than once in a game in his seven-year venture with the Whales, adding some power to his steadily improving hitting over the years.
The win also boosted the Whales’ win streak to four straight while handing the slumping Bears their fifth defeat in a row as the two teams seemed to be heading in opposite directions midway through the first half of the season.
Unlike the final score would suggest, the Bears actually struck first in the top of the third when Huang Long-yi led off the inning with a single off Whales starter Steve Watkins, stole second and scored on Gary Burnham’s RBI-groundout two batters later.
That was all the runs that the struggling Bears would plate as Watkins regrouped in a hurry and pitched through the seventh with minimal trouble en route to his third win of the season.
As for the marine creatures, they finally got to Bears starter Andrew Loraine after three scoreless innings with a pair of singles in the fourth to tie the game up at 1-all before tacking on two more in the sixth and ultimately blowing it wide open in a four-run seventh. Leading the Whales attack with their bats were Kuo and Lee Yi-wei whose combined 5-for-7 hitting with five RBIs accounted for the bulk of their team’s total offense.
Picking up the loss for the Bears was Loraine who allowed three runs on six hits over as many innings in his fourth straight quality start in seven chances to fall to a 2-3 mark for the year.
T-REX 6, LIONS 10
The President Lions outslugged the dmedia T-Rex in a 10-6 final at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium on Tuesday night to extend their winning-streak to five straight.
In a game they never trailed, the home Lions took an early 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first on a sacrifice-fly by Liu Fu-hao and an RBI-single by red-hot hitting Kao guo-ching before erupting for six more runs in the fourth to lead it 8-0.
Eleven batters made their way to the plate for the Lions as they racked up six singles and a double on top of a pair of walks to chase two dmedia pitchers.
The T-Rex offense finally broke through in the top of the fifth with a run on Chen Keh-fan’s RBI-single, only to see the Lions answered with their ninth run of the game in the bottom of the same inning in a 9-1 contest.
Trailing by eight runs, dmedia would rally for five runs from the sixth to the eighth to make a game of it. But that was as close as they got with the Lions bullpen coming up big late in the game to keep the margin at an acceptable four runs in the end.
Improving to 4-0 for the season with six solid innings of work was Lions starter Louis Pote who allowed three runs on six hits while striking out four and walking one to beat his counterpart Chang Hsien-chih who fell behind early with six earned runs in three-plus innings for his second loss of the year.
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