Taipei, Oct. 29 (CNA) The Rakuten Monkeys defeated the Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions 3-2 away from home in Tainan Saturday to tie up the best-of-five Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) playoffs series at one game apiece.
The Uni-Lions started with a one-game advantage after clinching the CPBL's first-half season title, and the winner will advance to the best-of-seven Taiwan Series against the Wei Chuan Dragons.
The Dragons qualified for the Taiwan Series automatically due to winning the second-half season title and having the best full-season record.
Following Game 1 at the Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium on Saturday, the Monkeys will next host the Uni-Lions for Game 2 on Sunday in Taoyuan.
In the nine CPBL playoff rounds held since 1998, the team winning Game 1 of the best-of-five series has advanced to the Taiwan Series.
Zheng Hao-ju (曾豪駒), Monkeys manager, praised his players for showing toughness in the face of the Uni-Lions' automatic 1-0 lead, crediting starting pitcher Fernandez Echavarria Pedro Arsenio for his dominance on the mound.
"He displayed great dominance after taking a 10-day break. He attacked the strike zone aggressively and made the batters swing and miss several times. So I decided to let him continue pitching even after the eighth inning," Zheng said.
Arsenio served up a quality start, yielding only two runs on six hits over his eight-inning stint, with a solo shot by Su Chih-chieh (蘇智傑) in the bottom of the fourth the only earned run.
The right-handed pitcher was pulled in the bottom of the ninth without retiring a batter after he walked Su and yielded a single to Chen Yung-chi (陳鏞基).
Asked to comment on the situation, the 29-year-old Dominican said he managed to place the pitches closer to the margin of the strike zone in the last frame but the outcome was not great.
Although he regretted not continuing to attack the strike zone as he did in the first eight innings, Arsenio said he was grateful for the depth of the Monkey's bullpen that weathered the crisis for him, alluding to closer Jake Dahlberg.
In addition to the home loss, the Uni-Lions suffered a blow in the fourth inning when designated hitter Lin An-ko (林安可) was carried off the field after fouling a ball off the outside of his left knee.
In a post-game interview, Uni-Lions manager Lin Yue-ping (林岳平) said that the injury was likely to rule Lin out of the rest of the playoff series, meaning a bigger role for Chiu Chih-cheng (邱智呈).
Game 2 is set to start at the Rakuten Taoyuan Baseball Stadium at 5:05 on Sunday, with Huang Tzu-peng (黃子鵬) and Keyvius Sampson starting on the mound for the Monkeys and Uni-Lions, respectively.
As of Saturday, 11,000 tickets have been sold, making the game the fifth challenger game with over 10,000 spectators in CPBL history.
"Now we've evened the series, I hope our fans will pack the stadium and cheer for us," Tseng said.
