Lin “Little Chick” En-yu tossed six scoreless innings of one-hit ball and Kuo Chien-yu drove in a run on a two-for-four night as the Brother Elephants shut down a potent Lamigo Monkeys lineup to walk away with a 2-0 win at the Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium in Tianmu last night to sweep their rain-shortened weekend series.
It was the second straight day that the Elephants silenced the defending champions following Saturday night’s 1-0 thriller that ended on a walk-off single by Chou Si-chi in the bottom of the ninth.
What should have been an easy weekend against the last-placed Elephants for the Primates, whose lineup has four current members of the national team, turned into an offensive struggle as they managed just two hits on the night against the stingy Elephants pitching.
Photo: Chang Chia- ming, Taipei Times
Also doing their part was the Elephants defense, who backed up their pitchers with several outstanding plays, most notably a double play that eliminate a Monkeys scoring threat in the top of the ninth inning and a spectacular back-hand grab that Chen Chiang-ho made look easy, before throwing out the hitter at first to end the game.
The Elephants wasted little time getting to right-hander Tseng Tsong-hsuan as they rang up a single and a double off the Monkeys starter in the top of the first inning to set up a sacrifice fly by Chang Chih-hao that gave them a quick a 1-0 lead.
Three consecutive singles by the men in the golden uniforms promptly made it 2-0 in the bottom of the second, capped by Kuo’s RBI single up the middle off Tseng.
That was all the runs, with the the Little Chick taking a no-hitter into the fifth inning, before giving up a single to the Monkeys’ Chen Chin-fong and holding his ground through the sixth en route to his first win of the season.
Tagged with the loss was Tseng, who allowed two runs on seven hits over four innings to drop to 0-2 for the season.
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