Chinese Taipei doubles down with another shutout
Katie Roupe/Observer-Reporter Chinese Taipei's Lin, Chen-Hsun cheers as he crosses home plate after hitting a homerun in the bottom of the third inning against Chesterfield, Virginia on Monday, August 8. Chinese Taipei won 10-0.
Chesterfield County, Va.’s Jack Hall strikes out during the top of the fifth inning against Chinese Taipei.
Chinese Taipei rolled through the 2015 Pony League World Series, winning the championship and allowing just three runs in its four games,
The 2016 team just might be better.
After shutting out Los Mochis, Mexico, 5-0 in its opening game of the world series Saturday, Chinese Taipei recorded its second shutout of the tournament Monday night, beating Chesterfield County, Va., 10-0, in five innings.
Hung-Chieh Chang and Chen-Hsun Lin combined on a four-hit shutout with six strikeouts and Kai Huang hit a pair of two-run home runs as Chinese Taipei advanced to today’s semifinals (5:30 p.m.). The champions of the Asia-Pacific Zone will face the winner of an elimination game which will be played at 10 a.m. today between Chesterfield and Los Mochis.
While Chinese Taipei manager Shih-Teng Chiu wasn’t with the team during its championship run in 2015, he is friends with that coaching staff and has leaned on their experience from last year.
“I’m really close with the coaches from last year,” Chiu said through interpreter Michael Chiang. “I’ve been talking to them daily to learn how to prepare for this tournament, drills to do and how to use my pitching.”
It couldn’t have been easy to pull Chang from the game, but Chiu did so after three innings with Chinese Taipei holding a a 5-0 lead.
Chang had allowed just a pair of hits, both of which came in the second inning when Ethan Iannuzzi hit a leadoff single and went to third on a two-out double to right by Ty Garner.
But Chang got Jack Hall to sky a ball to short centerfield to get out of the inning with a 2-0 lead intact.
That would be as close as Chesterfield, the East Zone champion, would get to scoring against Chang.
Chang moved to right field when Lin relieved him and Chesterfield got a leadoff single by starting pitcher Jay Woolfolk. Woolfolk moved to second on a wild pitch and tried to score from there on a one-out single to right by Jack Anderson.
But Chang fielded the sharp hit quickly and threw home to easily beat Woolfolk by five steps.
“They played a really good game strategy and played baseball 101,” said Chesterfield manager Ashley Arrowood. “Our boys, we didn’t play Chesterfield baseball. The things that we do, getting quality at bats, we took some hacks that we normally don’t take, swinging at curveballs in the dirt, going with big swings. We didn’t play the kind of baseball that has represented us and has gotten us this far.”
Meanwhile, at the plate, Huang was doing plenty of damage.
With leadoff batter Tzu-Wei Lin going three for three, Chen-Hsun Lin, batting from the fourth spot in the order, had plenty of opportunities to hit with runners on base ahead of him.
The righty lined out to center in the first inning, hitting the ball hard as Chinese Taipei grabbed a 2-0 lead. His second and third times up, he made sure Chesterfield’s outfielders couldn’t catch the ball.
In the third, he capped off a three-run inning off of Woolfork with a two-run homer to right field on a chest-high fastball to make it 5-0.
He then chased Woolfork from the game in the bottom of the fifth with a towering two-run homer to right once again. Woolfork allowed eight runs, all earned, in four-plus innings, striking out seven and walking one.
The trouble for Chesterfield was that every time Taipei had a baserunner, it scored.
“When they got them on base, they brought them around,” said Arrowood. “They did their job.”
Reliever Connelly Early didn’t fare much better. He faced three batters and four had hits, including a solo homer by Yao-Yu Tsai to right field to finish the game.
“They performed up to my expectations,” said Chiu of his team. “They improved from the first game.”
Pony notes
The Pirates were a sponsor of Monday night’s games and were represented by current relief pitcher Jared Hughes and former stars Omar Moreno, Kent Tekulve and Grant Jackson. … Chinese Taipei was just the third team to win in this tournament as the home team. Home teams entered the game 2-8. … Chesterfield won the world series in 2010.