Andy Sisco set a new mark in strikeouts through the first eight games of a season earlier this week, ringing up 10 against the Lamigo Monkeys to bring his strikeout total for the season to a staggering 67, topping the previous mark of 66 set by former Brother Elephants great Hisanori Yokota in 2004.
The American southpaw, whose well-traveled baseball path includes stints in the Majors with the Kansas City Royals and the Chicago White Sox, has been a steady force in the EDA Rhinos rotation over the past two seasons with a solid 2.70 earned run average (ERA) in 133-1/3 innings pitched over 21 starts last year and a 1.73 ERA in his eight starts thus far this year to lead the league in total wins, with four to his credit.
To put things in perspective, the 67 K’s by Sisco is so far above and beyond the rest of the league that the next-best strikeout total is a minuscule 29 by the Elephants’ Cheng Kai-wen, followed by Sisco’s teammate Huang Sheng-hsiung’s 27.
His lead over Cheng is so big that barring an injury, Sisco could have the inside track to win the strikeout title by a windfall.
STRUGGLING ELEPHANTS
While the Rhinos are enjoying a 7-3 run over their past 10 contests to climb out of the cellar in the standings, the Chinatrust Brother Elephants are continuing their slump with only a pair of victories in their past 10 tries to drop to a league-worst 8-18-1 for the year (through Wednesday).
Wednesday night’s 5-3 loss to the Uni-President Lions was the latest of six straight defeats that the men in the golden uniforms have suffered recently, due to a lack of offense that is most evident in their worst-in-the-league .238 batting average.
Other than Chang Chih-wei’s team-best .339 batting average, no other Elephants hitters in their regular lineup have a batting average above .250.
Skipper Hsieh Chang-han has already demoted sluggers Chou Si-chi and Wang Sheng-wei to the minors to tweak their swings, not to mention implementing a massive roster change that includes the demotion of starters Cheng Hung-chi and Tseng Song-wei.
Also contributing to the Elephants’ offensive woes at the plate is the cooling off of swinger Lin Wei-chu, who has gone hitless in his past six games off the bench to see his average drop below .200.
The former star of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball League was expected to bring even more power to an Elephants lineup that already has the services of Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min (with a .250 average) and Chou (with a .167 average).
Japanese badminton star Chiharu Shida on Tuesday told Chinese fans to “stop stalking” her, adding that she was “very scared” by the unwanted attention. Shida, who won women’s doubles bronze at the Paris Olympics last year, has a strong following in China partly because of her engagement with the local culture. The 27-year-old, currently competing at the Badminton Asia Championships in Ningbo, China, has been dubbed the “Badminton Goddess” by fans and media. She hit out at some supporters on Tuesday, accusing them in an Instagram post of taking their fandom too far. “Every time we compete in China we always experience the harm
Two people died on Thursday after fans and police clashed outside the Estadio Monumental in Santiago ahead of a game in South America’s Copa Libertadores, Chilean authorities said. The fatalities happened shortly before the match between Chile’s Colo-Colo and Brazilian club Fortaleza, when police blocked about 100 fans when they attempted to enter the stadium. There were conflicting accounts of how the fatalities occurred, with local media reporting that one of the dead was a 13-year-old boy. The other victim was an 18-year-old woman, according to a relative at the hospital where she was treated. The fans died after being caught underneath a
A potential European league could be a gold mine for the NBA as the top-flight North American league looks to muscle its way into a deep pool of talent across the Atlantic Ocean. The NBA is exploring the launch of a European league with world basketball governing body FIBA as a partner, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said last week, with an eye toward a 16-team format made up of 12 permanent clubs and four qualifiers. The continent’s longstanding Euroleague quickly signaled its readiness to enter into talks with the NBA, even as it has balked at the idea of another league in
Tadej Pogacar on Sunday won an epic see-saw showdown at the Tour of Flanders, soloing home from 15km, with Mads Pedersen edging Mathieu van der Poel to second at the line a minute later with Wout van Aert fourth. The duel between the Slovenian and defending champion Van der Poel played out across the 17 hills in bright sunshine before Pogacar broke away. World champion Pogacar, who won the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France last year, collected his eighth one-day Monument, moving ahead of one-day specialist Van der Poel on seven. “The goal was to win, but at
RSS