(Story by Marco Stoovelaar)
    Taipei Team captures title in Asia Winter Baseball League
Nederlands
 TAICHUNG (Taiwan) -
The Chinese Taipei National Training Team is the champion of the third edition of the Asia Winter Baseball League.
In the all-deciding Final on Sunday-evening (December 20), the team won 4-2 against the NPB Team from Japan.
For this season, the Chinese Taipei National Training Team was compiled from talented college-players and also included some players who are regulars on the National Team of Taiwan.
Five of them participated in the recent Premier12.
Right from the beginning of the season, this Taiwanese team showed its strength and developed into a serious contender for the title, which it captured today.
The young, but very talented team was led by veteran Manager Chien-Fu Kuo-Lee, who also led the 21Under National Team to the championship-title last year in the inaugural U21 World Championship.
The NPB Team, KBO Team and CPBL Team were all compiled from professional players.
Team Europe had six active professional players on its roster.
In the Final, the NPB Team led 2-1 when the eighth inning began.
NPB-starter Yuta Kakita had given up only two basehits in the seven innings he had pitched so far, but ran into problems in the eighth.
He first gave up a single to Min-Hsun Chang.
Next batter Sheng-Chieh Lin then put down a bunt towards Kakita, who looked to second base, hesitated for a moment, then made a bad throw towards first base.
Hereafter, Tzu-Hsien Chan also initially appeared for a bunt, then made a normal swing and reached on an infield-hit to load the bases.
That led to a pitching change and Tomohiro Hamada took over for Kakita.
In his previous five outings, the lefthander had struckout 17 batters in 15 innings, walked only three and had given up eight hits.
But his first delivery to pinch-hitter Chung-Ting Chen ended in a broken-bat, 2-run double that gave the Taipei Team a 3-2 lead and with that, Hamada was credited with a Blown Save.
Next batter Yu-Ning Tsao then flied out to rightfield, which eventually turned into a double play.
Lin had stayed on third base, but Chen had taken off from second base and got into a rundown.
That led to Lin moving towards home, then he also got into a rundown and was eliminated.
Hereafter, Li Lin delivered a runscoring single that gave the Taiwanese team an insurance run and made it 4-2 in its favor.
The inning ended with a drive into deep rightfield by Tai-Chun Yang, but the rightfielder caught the ball against the fence.
With a 4-2 lead, the bullpen took over for the Taiwanese squad, which had some very successful pitchers in its staff this season.
Lefthander An-Ke Lin took over.
In his previous eight outings, he had struckout 15 batters in 9 2/3 inning and gave up only four basehits.
But he now walked lead-off hitter Yusuke Masago and gave up a single to Kazuma Yamashita.
Hardthrowing Jen-Lei Liao then became the new pitcher.
He also had impressive stats, as he had struckout 19 batters and gave up seven hits in 10 innings during his nine previous outings.
The first batters he faced, Seiji Uebayashi, bunted the ball up in the air.
Catcher Min-Hsu Chang caught the ball and was able to complete a double play at second base, as Masago had left on the bunt.
Liao then ended the inning by striking out Kazuma Okamoto, one of the leading hitters in the Japanse squad.
Liao returned to the mound in the bottom of the ninth inning.
He gave up a 2-out single, but a soft line drive was then caught to end the attractive final.
In the afternoon, the KBO Team nipped the Taiwan Beer CPBL Team, 9-8 on a walk-off single in the ninth inning, to finish in third place.
The KBO Team took the lead three times, but each time, the CPBL Team came back from behind to take the lead themselves twice, then made it a tie score in the eighth.
It was the Taiwanese team that opened the score with one run in the top of the second, but the KBO Team answered with two of its own in its second at bat.
Hereafter, both teams scored twice in the third inning.
Trailing 4-3, the CPBL Team scored two runs in the top of the sixth, but this time, the KBO Team reacted with four runs moments later.
The 8-5 also wasn't enough, as the CPBL Team made it an 8-8 tie by scoring three runs in the top of the eighth inning.
In the bottom of the ninth, pinch-hitter Chi-Hong An led off for the KBO Team with a walk, then moved to second base on a sacrifice bunt by Sa-Hoon Kim and scored the winning run on a walk-off single by pinch-hitter Kyun-Grok Lee.
Final Standings
1. Chinese Taipei National Training Team, 2. NPB Team, 3. KBO Team, 4. Taiwan Beer CPBL Team, 5. Team Europe.
(December 20)
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