A one-run loss to the Lamigo Monkeys last weekend followed by Wednesday night’s defeat by the EDA Rhinos mean the top-ranked Brother Elephants are now on a three-game losing skid.
What had been a four-game lead over the second-placed Monkeys as recently as a week ago has dwindled to a slim one-game cushion for the men in yellow after they dropped three straight “winnable” matches because of a lack of timely hitting.
In two of the three defeats, the Elephants’ offense actually outhit their opponents by a 22-18 margin, but only had five combined runs on the scoreboard to show for it.
“[The Elephants] are getting the hits on offense, just not scoring too many runs with those hits,” renowned baseball commentator Yang Ching-lung said earlier this week.
The Elephants’ tendency to strand runners could mean trouble for them if the race to the second-half title heats up, which seems likely.
While shuffling the batting order may be one way to help improve his team’s scoring efficiency, the real issue for skipper Hsieh Chang-hen lies in the Elephants’ timidness at the plate. His hitters have been showing a distinct lack of confidence during clutch situations in recent games.
OLD HANDS
This is the perfect time for old hands such as Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min to demonstrate their leadership, as Hsieh is in only his first full season with the club and may not have had the chance to bond with the players as much as he would have liked.
Chia Chia is the ideal individual for this task, not only because of his tremendous accomplishments on the field over the years, but also thanks to his impeccable history off the field as an exemplary role model.
The Elephants could also use some assistance in the bullpen in the late innings, with setup man Guan Da-yuan and closer Brad Thomas eating up more innings than they would like due to a lack of depth in the squad.
WEEKEND PREVIEW
The Elephants hit the road this weekend with potentially tough encounters against the Uni-President Lions at the Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium before the weekend finale at the Douliou County Baseball Stadium on Sunday.
INTERNAL TURMOIL
It will be a golden opportunity for the Elephants to try to open a gap on the Lamigo Monkey in the standings as they take on a Lions squad that has suffered some internal turmoil with interim manager Chen Lien-hung at the helm for less than a week after replacing the demoted Terushi Nakashima.
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
RSS