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On Tuesday in Japan, the Japan Series rematch series got started in Osaka, sans Yoshinobu Yamamoto, while each league leader played the other league’s last place team. Andre Jackson had a big game for the DeNA BayStars, and the interleague-leading Rakuten Eagles had a big comeback.

Off the field we had some Tuesday activations, while the batter and pitcher of the month awards were announced.

The Nippon Ham Fighters called up Kotaro Kiyomiya ahead of their interleague series against Chunichi. In 25 Eastern League games this season, mostly when rehabbing from an injury suffered around the start of spring training, Kiyomiya has slashed .290/.379/.476 with 17 walks and 18 strikeouts. The Dragons have also recalled veteran infielder Shuhei Takahashi and their 2021 top draft pick, 25-year-old outfielder Kenta Bright, who has not been hitting for average or power on the farm, but has drawn lots of walks. Takahashi suffered a leg injury on April 16.

The Yakult Swallows dropped a pair of veterans, right-hander Yasuhiro Ogawa and regular catcher Yuhei Nakamura, who was dropped the last two games from the starting lineup in favor of Naoki Matsumoto with the team’s go-to reserves, Soma Uchiyama and Yudai Koga unavailable. As a backup Yakult brought up their fourth-round pick from last year’s draft, 18-year-old Kyo Suzuki for his first taste of big league baseball.

Tuesday’s games:

Buffaloes 4, Tigers 0: At Osaka UFO Dome, Ryuhei Sotani (4-2) struck out 12 through six innings while allowing seven singles and no walks as Orix won its sixth straight to start its 2023 Japan Series rematch home stand.

After Hanshin stranded four runners through the first four innings, Orix cashed in its first scoring opportunity against Shoki Murakami (2-5) when Yuma Tongu doubled in Kotaro Kurebayashi from second with two outs in the fifth. The Buffaloes ryo, ryo, ryoed their boat to a run in the sixth on one-out singles from Ryoto Kita, Ryo Ota and Ryoma Nishikawa.

Nobuyoshi Yamada struck out the side in the seventh, and the Tigers hit a couple of bullets in the seventh, but web gems from Yuma Mune at third and Tongu at first made it a 1-2-3 inning. Doubles by Kita and Ota and a Nishikawa single made it 4-0 in the eighth against Murakami, who went the distance.

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For some reason, probably a miss-translation, Japanese pro baseball only counts no-hitters that are also shutouts. Daichi Osera’s gem on Friday., June 7, was the 102nd of those thrown in Japan’s majors during the regular season. I knew of at least one other, but hadn’t done the leg work to identify more. So I was happy to learn that Osera’s no-hitter was actually the 104th individual effort.

This information allows us to correct a sentence that was bandied about a lot last year when Yoshinobu Yamamoto threw his no-hitter. At the time, Kyodo News wrote:

“In September, Yamamoto threw a no-hitter for the second consecutive year, something previously accomplished in 1936 and 1937 by Sawamura and in 1940 and 1941 by Tadashi Kameda.”

While that is true, it is precise only if we limit these three pitchers’ no-hitters only to shutouts… Because the record for consecutive seasons with a no-hitter is not two, but three.

As for why Japan’s rule for counting no-hitters is different from MLB’s, my guess is that a miss-translation on this side likely caused generations of Japanese to believe that only shutouts could be no-hitters. There are at least two precedents for this:

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Tuesday’s games:

The forgotten 4 & miss-translations

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