The Chinatrust Whales bounced back nicely from an embarrassing shutout loss (0-13) to the dmedia T-Rex on Wednesday with a sound 6-2 win at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang on Thursday night to salvage a one-game series split with the T-Rex.
Kuo Dai-yong and Carlos Villalobos both hit their fourth homer of the season in the game to lead a struggling Whales attack that had averaged just 3.0 runs per game in their previous dozen over a 3-9 stretch in the win.
Taking the mound for the marine creatures was a different-looking Shen Yu-jeh, who shook off back-to-back losses to the T-Rex to pick up his third win of the season with five-and-two-third innings of shutout ball in a five-hit outing before the Whales bullpen came in and preserved the win with minimal damage.
The showdown between the T-Rex’s Chang Hsien-chih and Shen saw the Whales needing little time to solve the former 12-game winner for the past two straight seasons, with Kuo launching a two-run blast off Chang followed by an RBI-single by Abraham Nunez to open a 3-0 lead in the bottom of the third.
Chinatrust scored their fourth run of the game two innings later with Villalobos’ solo shot off Chang in the fifth to make it 4-0 before the T-Rex finally got on the board in the seventh to break up the shutout bid.
Even though the T-Rex managed to score once more in the top of the ninth on a sacrifice-fly by Kuo Ming-ren, the outcome of the game was never in doubt as the Whales had struck for two more runs in the eighth to lead it 6-1 before the dmedia rally.
Suffering the loss for the T-Rex was Chang who allowed four runs on seven hits over four-and-two-third innings to drop to 2-4 for the year.
Elephants 0, Bears 0, postponed
The scheduled contest between the Brother Elephants and the La New Bears at the Kaohsiung County Baseball Stadium on Thursday was rained out as wet weather blanketed southern Taiwan for the third straight day. It was postponed to June 14th as part of the four-game series between the two squads.
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