The Brother Elephants bounced back nicely to avert disaster with a narrow 5-4 win over the Chinatrust Whales at the Taipei County Baseball Stadium in Sinjhuang on Friday evening.
Fresh off a tough 4-5 loss to the President Lions the night before in which they coughed up a three-run lead by allowing four unanswered runs late in the game, the Elephants got one back on Friday thanks to a costly drop by the Whales catcher on a play at the plate that scored two in the top of the sixth to make it 5-3.
Trailing by a deuce, the Whales would rally in the bottom of the ninth with a run off Elephants closer Mai Jia-rei to fall within a run and actually had the tying run on first before Mai buckled down and got the Whales’ Chen Jia-hong to pop up to second to end the game.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
Picking up his second win of the year with one-and-one-third innings of scoreless relief was Wu Bao-shien, beating Whales starter Nee Fu-deh, who allowed five runs (only two earned) on 11 hits over six-and-two-third frames in his ninth defeat of the season.
T-REX 6, BULLS 1
The dmedia T-Rex made it look easy against the Sinon Bulls as they dialed up six unanswered runs over the final four innings to run off with a 6-1 win at the Ilan County Baseball Stadium in Luodong on Friday night.
Cory Bailey pitched seven sharp innings of one-run ball on five hits to improve to 7-4 for the year, while Kuo Ming-ren went deep with his second home run of the season on a three-RBI night to lead the T-Rex attack.
Fellow hitter Wang Chuan-jia also belted three base hits in his team-leading 26th multi-hit game of the year to boost his average to .314.
Sinon starter Yang Jien-fu kept the T-Rex scoreless through the fifth with a brilliant four-hit effort before running into trouble in a three-run sixth.
The 3-1 lead was more than ample for dmedia as Bailey and his bullpen mates clamped down on the Bulls the rest of the way, never allowing another runner to reach second en route to an easy victory.
WHALES 3, BULLS 2
The Chinatrust Whales won their second one-run game against the Bulls on Thursday at the Hsinchu Municipal Baseball Stadium to sweep the two-game series versus the Bulls.
Rather than rallying from behind as they did to take Wednesday night’s contest, the marine creatures never trailed on Thursday despite allowing a solo homer to the Bulls’ Lin Hsun-wei in the bottom of the ninth to make it a one-run game.
That was when skipper Hsieh Chang-hen called on closer Lorenzo Barcelo, who promptly retired the final two Bulls hitters in order to preserve the win.
Starter Du Chang-wei was credited with his third win of the year for holding the Bulls to a run on nine hits over six-and-two-third innings of work, bettering his counterpart Jeffrey Farnsworth, who lasted only two-and-a-third innings with a pair of allowed runs on a half-dozen hits to suffer his second setback of the year.
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