TAIWAN – Former major leaguer Rico Washington tied a Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) record with five hits and the Uni-President Lions exploded for nine runs in the sixth to capture a 14-10 victory over the Brother Elephants this past Tuesday night.

Washington, who toiled in the minor leagues for more than a decade before getting a brief shot with the St. Louis Cardinals last season, was 5-for-6 with a stolen base and an RBI in a high-scoring matchup that featured a combined 36 hits by both squads.

The Elephants opened the scoring in the second off Lions’ starter Valerio de los Santos to take a 1-0 lead in front of aa announced crowd of 4,065. But the reigning CPBL champion grabbed the lead with a three-run third, and put the game out of reach in the sixth.

The trio of Sung-Hsien Yang, Lien-Hung Chen, and Tung-Yi Yang each had three hits and totaled six RBIs for the Lions who racked up 19 hits. First baseman KC Kao homered and drove in three runs.

The Elephants trailed 12-1 heading into the bottom of the sixth and scored six unanswered runs over the next two innings to make the score 12-7. The Lions tacked on a pair of runs in the eighth before the Bears plated three runs in the bottom of the inning to end the scoring.

Chih-Yuan Chen connected for his second long ball of the season and had three RBIs for the Elephants.

Cheng-Feng Lin (2-1) worked two scoreless relief innings to get the win, while Dan Core (0-1) gave up thee runs and five hits in four innings to get charged with the loss.

Photo courtesy of macleans.wordpress.com

Tags: CPBL Update, Taiwan