The red-hot Brothers Baseball Club continued their recent surge by downing the Uni-President Lions 7-3 at the Taipei Tianmu Baseball Stadium last night for their fifth straight victory.
Fresh off an 11-7 slugfest against the Lamigo Monkeys the night before that stretched their winning streak to four, the men in the golden uniforms needed little time getting on the board, with Chang Chih-hao taking Lion starter Liao Wen-yang deep in the bottom of the first with a two-run blast to put his team 2-0 ahead.
The Brothers upped their lead by another run in the second when Wang Sheng-wei led off the inning with a single off Liao and scored three batters later on a run-scoring error by the Lions defense.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
After a scoreless third and fourth, the Lions finally broke through against Brothers starter Chiou Ping-rei in the fifth inning on the strength of three singles, but it was considered a moral victory for Chiou, who stranded two with an inning-ending strikeout to hold the Lions offense to a lone run in the inning.
The 3-1 scoreline remained through the sixth, before the Brothers batted around the order to plate four in the seventh and blow the game wide open.
Trailing by six, the Lions were able to score twice in the ninth off reliever Chou Lei, but it was too little, too late as the Brothers held on to make a winner out of Chiou to give him three wins this year.
Tagged with the loss was Liao, who fell to 3-12 for the season, despite allowing three runs on seven hits over six innings in a quality start.
MONKEYS 11, RHINOS 2
Behind a grand slam by Lin Chih-sheng, the Lamigo Monkeys roughed up the EDA Rhinos 11-2 at the Cheng Ching Lake Baseball Stadium in Kaohsiung last night to nip a three-game slide.
Contrary to what the final score would suggest, the hosts actually struck first against Primates starter Jared Lansford with an early run in the top of the third when Lin Cuen-sheng led off the inning with a double and scored on Lin Wang-wei’s RBI single.
The Rhinos’ 1-0 lead lasted less than an inning, though, as the Monkeys answered with Lin’s grand slam to put his team ahead for good.
Picking up his 16th win of the season was Lansford, who tossed five innings of one-run ball on four hits in five innings of work to beat his counterpart, Tsai Ming-chin.
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