Inability to solve the SK Wyverns pitching when it counted the most proved costly to the Brother Elephants as they dropped a 5-2 decision to the champs of the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) at the Intercontinental Baseball Stadium in Taichung last night to settle for a one-game split in their two-game series.
The home team had plenty of chances to crack open the scoring gate against the South Korean pitching with seven hits under their belts, but simply could not buy one when they needed it the most.
The Elephants batted a dismal two-for-10 with runners in scoring position (both of the hits being infield singles that produce just a run) to lose long before the final out.
PHOTO: LIAO YAO-TONG
“It’s hard to win when you don’t come up with hits with runners on,” Elephants skipper Chen Rei-chen said after the game.
The loss also meant a big difference in the prize money for the Elephants, since a win would have netted them NT$8 million (US$260,000) in total earnings as opposed to the NT$5 million they were awarded.
In a classic pitchers’ duel between the Elephants’ Jim Magrane and SK’s Japanese righthander Ken Kadokura, it was the Wyverns that finally broke the ice after five scoreless innings when Park Jae-sang led off the bottom of the sixth with a clean single off Magrane and scored two batters later on Kim Jae-hyun’s run-scoring single to right.
The Wyverns tacked on another run in the same inning with an RBI groundout by Lee Ho-joon that made it 2-0.
An untimely fielding error by the Elephants’ Wang Sheng-wei led to three unearned runs in the seventh.
Even though the Elephants got two of the runs back via a bases-loaded walk and an infield single by Huang Shih-hao that made it a three-run game in the eighth, it was too little, too late as the rally fell short by three to give the Wyverns a face-saving victory.
Picking up the win was Kadokura who tossed seven innings of shutout ball on six hits, while the loss went to Magrane as the American righty was outdone by Kadokura with four runs allowed (only two earned) on six hits, falling victim to a lack of run support and a pair of defensive errors that led to three unearned runs for the Wyverns.
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