Last-placed Uni-President Lions surprised the Lamigo Monkeys in a 3-2 thriller at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium last night to even their road series in northern Taiwan at one win apiece following Friday night’s series-opening loss.
Warner Madrigal entered in the bottom of the ninth with a 3-1 lead and walked in a run with one out after loading up the bases to put the tying run 27m from the plate.
However, the Lions closer was able to retire the next two batters in a row by striking out Lin “Chubby Kid” Hung-yu and getting Kuo Yen-wen to ground out to second to preserve the victory for the visitors in a dramatic finish.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
The Cats needed little time drawing first blood, as they rang up three singles and a walk off Monkeys starter Jared Lansford in the top of the first to take a 2-0 lead.
That was all the runs that either offense would score through to the seventh, with Lansford quickly holding his ground and his counterpart Liao Wen-yang doing the same in a classic pitchers’ duel.
After six scoreless frames, the Lions offense struck again in the top of the eighth inning on the merit of two singles to set up Deng Chih-wei’s sacrifice fly off Lansford that made it 3-0 in favor of the visitors.
Trailing by three, the hosts finally got to the Lions pitching by plating their first run of the contest in the eighth, when Lin Chih-sheng led off the bottom of the inning with a stand-up double to extend his current hitting streak to 13 games, finally scoring two batters later on Kuo’s grounder to second to break up the impending shutout.
Lamigo would score once more in the ninth and fill up the sacks before Madrigal mustered just enough to deny the home team what would have been a brilliant comeback.
Liao kept a potent Primates lineup to a lone run on four hits over 6-2/3 innings of work — despite issuing a season-high six walks — with some timely strikeouts and the help of a defense that turned three double plays to strand a total of eight runners for his first victory of the season.
Taking the loss was starter Lansford, who allowed three runs on 10 hits over eight innings to fall to 3-1 for the season.
BROTHERS 10, RHINOS 8
Scoring early and often, the Chinatrust Brothers outslugged the league-leading EDA Rhinos 10-8 at the Cheng Ching Lake Baseball Stadium in Kaohsiung to even their road series at one win each.
Cheng Kai-wen became the second four-game winner in the league by taking a 7-4 lead two outs into the seventh before being relieved and held his breath for the next 2-1/3 innings, with his bullpen mates nearly squandering the lead before picking up the “W.”
Kao Kuo-hui led all hitters with a five-RBI night, highlighted by two home runs in a losing cause for the Rhinos. The handsome slugger out of the University of Taipei has six homers for the year, one short of Lin’s league-leading seven.
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