The top-ranked Lamigo Monkeys continued their home-field dominance of the Chinatrust Brothers by rallying for five runs in the bottom of the ninth to escape with an improbable 6-5 win at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium last night.
Trailing 5-1 at the bottom of the ninth, the home Primates managed to place their first two batters on via a leadoff single and a walk off Brothers closer Hsieh Rong-hao before loading up the bases on a fielding error by Chinatrust with one out to set up Tsai Chien-wei’s two-run single, which made it 5-3.
With the momentum clearly swinging their way at that point, Lamigo came through again for their fourth run in the game when Chen Chin-fong connected on an RBI single off Hsieh to bring his club to within a run of the Brothers.
After Hsieh struck out the next batter for the second out of the inning, the Monkeys struck once more, this time on Kuo Yong-wei’s clutch single, which scored the tying run from second, before a wild throw to second by Chinatrust’s Peng “Chia Chia” Cheng-min gave Chen the chance to score the game-winner.
“It’s never over until the final out of the game is recorded,” Chen said after the game. He was named the MVP for the shot off Hsieh, which breathed new life into the Primates.
Huang Shih-hao’s two-run single off Monkeys starter Lin Guo-yu with the bases loaded capped a three-run third to give Brothers starter Lin Yu-ching a quick 3-0 lead, which the men in the golden uniforms extended to 5-1 by the top of the eighth in what appeared to be a safe cushion for the Brothers to end their 10-game losing skid against the Monkeys in Taoyuan.
However, that was not the case as the pesky Primates managed to scrape up just enough, with a little help from Peng, to extend their home-field supremacy against the Brothers.
Picking up the win was Cheng Cheng-hao, who tossed three innings of one-run relief to beat his counterpart, Hsieh, for his first win of the season.
The Uni-President Lions, EDA Rhinos game was postponed.
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