Tsuyoshi Wada was awfully good, but not enough to overcome Tomoya Mori, Hiroya Miyagi and the Buffaloes. Masahiro Tanaka was outpitched by up-and-coming Seibu lefty Chihiro Sumida, Hiroki Tokoda had one of his better games, and the Marines found themselves firing blanks for the second straight night.

Thursday’s games

Buffaloes 2, Hawks 1: At Osaka UFO Dome, Tsuyoshi Wada (6-5) allowed a run on four hits over six innings without a walk, while Hiroya Miyagi (8-4), pitched out of trouble after walking three and hitting one over six innings.

Kenta Imamiya doubled and scored in the first on a single by Yuki Yanagita, who was thrown out on the bases, while Tomoya Noguchi singled to open the Buffaloes’ first and scored on a Tomoya Mori sacrifice fly.

The Hawks left three on in the top of the fourth, and Mori snapped the tie with his 13th home run, leading off the bottom of the inning. Three Buffaloes relievers followed Miyagi with Yoshihisa Hirano getting his 20th save.

The typhoon that disrupted baseball, pro and high school on Tuesday, passed across Japan’s largest main island, Honshu, and left travel disruptions in its wake, stranding passengers for hours on end on the busy Tokaido Shinkansen. But baseball was back and of prime interest in my home.

In pro ball, the Hanshin Tigers went into their game in Hiroshima needing a win to light up their “magic number,” Shingo Usami, a career reserve catcher with his third pro team is making a name for himself as a late-inning clutch hitter, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Kohei Arihara duked it out for the second time in four weeks.

Wednesday’s games

Hawks 3, Buffaloes 2: At Osaka UFO Dome, Yoshinobu Yamamoto (11-5) allowed three unearned runs and left after throwing 110 pitches over five innings, while Kohei Arihara (5-3) allowed two runs over eight innings to beat Yamamoto for the second time in their last two match-ups.

Tatsuru Yanagimachi‘s two-out bases-loaded single brought SoftBank from a run down in the third and the Hawks never trailed after that.