House byline
Sports correspondent
Cheng-Han Pan is a house byline for InfoHandle’s Sports desk.
The Wei Chuan Dragons punched their ticket to the CPBL Taiwan Series with a 3-1 complete-game win over the Rakuten Monkeys on Sunday, as veteran pitcher Chen Wei-Yin held the monkeys to four hits through nine innings at Taoyuan Stadium.
Chen Wei-Yin threw a complete game as the Wei Chuan Dragons beat the Rakuten Monkeys 4–1, clinching a Taiwan Series berth on the penultimate day of the CPBL regular season.
The Rakuten Monkeys beat the Uni-President Lions 7–6 before 18,000 fans in Taoyuan, evening the CPBL first-round series at one game apiece.
CPBL playoff game one pits the Uni-President Lions at the CTBC Brothers on Oct. 9 at 5:05 p.m. in Taichung, with the Brothers holding a 1–0 series handicap in the best-of-five Taiwan Series qualifier.
Mario Sanchez struck out six over seven innings and the CTBC Brothers scored three in the first on their way to a 4-1 win over the Uni-President Lions in Taichung, taking a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five challenge series.
The CTBC Brothers open the CPBL challenge series against the Uni-President Lions on Oct. 9 with a one-win advantage after capturing the second-half title.
The Rakuten Monkeys named former major leaguer Marcelo Martínez as their Game 1 starter for the Taiwan Series at Taipei Dome on Friday against the CTBC Brothers.
The Fubon Guardians secured the CPBL’s top playoff seed after the Uni-President Lions dropped a Taipei Dome finale, losing a wild-card tiebreaker on run differential.
CTBC Brothers ace Will Rogowski notched his 12th win to seal the second-half title, sending Uni-Lions into a best-of-five challenge series that opens Friday at Taichung Intercontinental with a one-game head start for Brothers.
The CTBC Brothers sold more than 14,000 infield seats for Sunday's home game against the TSGBirds, needing one win at Taichung Intercontinental to clinch the second-half CPBL title.
The Leopard Cat Marathon at Sun Moon Lake registered 4,200 finishers Saturday under cloudy skies, with organizers capping entries to protect habitat corridors flagged by forestry officials after last year’s trail erosion.
The Uni-President Lions cut their Taiwan Series playoff magic number to one after beating the Wei Chuan Dragons 4–3, with ace Blake R. slated to start Friday’s clincher in Tainan.
Ye Hong-wei and Zhan You-zhen took badminton mixed doubles bronze at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games after a semifinal loss to China, ending a 16-year medal drought in the event.
The CPBL scheduled three August rainout makeup games on September 30 as second-half pennant and wild-card races tighten.
Chinese Taipei reached 29 medals at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games by Monday morning as Lin Yun-ju opened his table tennis singles campaign amid a packed finals week in Japan.
The 23-year-old cleared 2.25 metres on Sunday to deliver Taiwan's first men's athletics gold at the Asian Games in six decades and the nation's third gold of the Nagoya meet.
The CPBL's second-half race is down to a half-game gap, and Sunday's three-game card puts the Hawks and Lions under the Taipei Dome roof while outdoor games at Xinzhuang and Tianmu deal with late-September heat.
Eppler spun a shutout and Cheng came apart in the sixth as Rakuten beat Brothers 6-0 in Taoyuan on Sep 25, sweeping the series and cutting the second-half lead to half a game.
The CPBL's penultimate regular-season weekend sold out Taichung Intercontinental Stadium as the Fubon Guardians clinched a wild-card berth, forcing ticket lotteries for Guardians–Lions games that decide home-field seeding before Monday's roster freeze.