The Brother Elephants improved to a league-best 4-2 mark with a 4-2 win over the Lamigo Monkeys at the Chengching Baseball Stadium in Greater Kaohsiung last night to force a tie atop the standings for first place with the Uni-President Lions.
Rookie starter Lu Shou-yu gave up an early run in the third inning on a pair of singles to the Monkeys, but quickly buckled down and retired all but two of the next dozen hitters he faced in a four-hit effort over 6-2/3 innings of work with no walks to snatch his first career victory.
Offensively for the men in the golden uniforms, the night belonged to veteran slugger Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min, whose clutch double down the right-field line scored both runners and turned a 0-1 deficit into a 2-1 lead for his team in the bottom of the sixth.
Photo: Huang Chih-yuan, Taipei Times
The Elephants tacked on a pair of runs in the seventh on the merit of back-to-back scoring singles by Chen Jiang-ho and Chen Chih-hong to claim a 4-1 advantage en route to the win.
Monkeys starter Ken Ray did not show his best stuff on the day as he surrendered four runs on nine hits over 6-1/3 frames of work to suffer his first defeat of the season. The American right-hander is now 1-1 with an ERA of 3.86.
LIONS 2, BULLS 0
The Uni-President Lions dealt the Sinon Bulls their fifth straight loss of the season by blanking the Bulls in a 2-0 shutout at the Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium last night.
Right-hander Yuya Kamada took a three-hit shutout bid through the seventh for the second straight start before his bullpen followed with a scoreless eighth and ninth to keep the shutout win intact for the Japanese native who improved to a league-best 2-0 for the season.
The classic pitchers’ duel saw Kamada outhurl his counterpart Lin Chi-wei, who gave up a run on four hits while fanning eight in six innings to lose the game despite pitching a quality start. The loss set Lin back to 0-2 as the Bulls remain winless at 0-5 so far this year.
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