Hsu Wen-hsiung pitched six solid innings of one-run ball and Shih Chih-wei drove in a pair of runs on a 3-for-4 night to lead the La New Bears past the Sinon Bulls 8-1 at the Kaohsiung County Baseball Stadium on Wednesday night.
It was a big win for Hsu not only because it improved his season mark to a respectable 3-1, but also because it was his 20th career victory which began in 2003 with the merger of the two leagues (the Chinese Professional Baseball League and the Taiwan Major League).
“It’s a big win for me because I have struggled on and off over the years for one reason or another,” Hsu said after the game as he was also voted the game-MVP.
Doing the damage at the plate was Shih who picked up his fifth three-hit game of the year while improving his average to .314.
Two quick runs in the bottom of the first from back-to-back sacrifice-flies by Chen Chin-fong and Gary Burnham spotted the home Bears to a 2-0 lead before they added three more runs an inning later on an RBI-double by Huang “Easy” Long-yi and a two-run single by Shih to go up 5-0.
Sinon starter Yu Wen-pin was greeted harshly by the Bears hitters in his shortest start of the season as he was relieved by Tsai Ming-jin in the second after being charged with all of the five early runs for the Bears.
Even though Tsai would pitch the next three-and-two-thirds innings without surrendering any runs to keep his club in the game, his offense was unable to solve Hsu with five futile innings against the Bears starter until it finally came through in the sixth with a lone run off Hsu after leading off the inning with a double and a single to place runners at the corners with no outs.
That was as close as the Bulls got as Hsu pitched out of the jam with minimal deanage en route to the convincing win.
Suffering the loss for the Bulls was Yu who had been 3-0 heading into the game with a outstanding ERA of 2.1 before serving up five runs on as many hits in a losing effort.
Whales 2 Lions 4
Top-ranked President Lions doubled up on the Chinatrust Whales in a 4-2 decision in Tainan on Tuesday to kick off the week of play with a bang.
Accounting for all four of his team’s runs, red-hot slugger Kao Guo-ching continued his dominance over the opposing pitchers by belting a two-run homer that brought his team back from two down in the seventh and a two-run single in the eighth to win it.
Kao’s outstanding play at the plate kept Lions starter Pan “Du Du” Wei-luen’s record-setting, 20-game winning streak alive as the Lions staff ace avoided what would have been a loss as he left the game in after the sixth trialing the Whales 0-2.
Du Du would end up with a no-decision on the night as the late-game surge by the Lions offense made a winner out of reliever Chang Chih-chiang for his two innings of scoreless relief in the seventh and eighth.
Tagged with the tough loss was Chang’s counterpart Liu Yu-chan who loaded up the bases in the eighth after getting two quick outs before giving up the game-deciding double to Kao.
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