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Blowback, bad breaks and Friday’s games

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It’s took two weeks, but the blowback over Yakult manager Takahiro Ikeyama’s heretical disregard of Japan’s sacrifice bunt dogma has begun. The Orix Buffaloes got some bad news, and there were games as well.

Bad break for Buffaloes  

Orix ace Hiroya Miyagi was diagnosed with damage to his ulnar collateral ligament in his left elbow Friday, and the team said it will get a second opinion before proceeding with season-ending surgery. Miyagi threw some absolutely wicked sliders to get two strikeouts with two on and no outs but left after the second strikeout with elbow discomfort.

The diminutive 24-year-old southpaw has struck out 17 batters in 13-1/3 innings this season. He is 50-30 in his career with a 2.51 ERA, has pitched for Japan in each of the last two WBC’s, and was one of the players I was so looking forward to seeing regularly this season.

He’s a delightful guy, and in March at Tokyo Dome, he became the first Japanese player in my 30 years covering baseball here to ask me to give him a high five.

Bunt blowback

“If they (the Swallows) keep playing this way, they’ll finish last,” a “pennant-winning manager” said Thursday according to Ronspo.com.

On Wednesday, former Hanshin Tigers skipper Akinobu Okada questioned Ikeyama’s choices.

“Back when I was managing, the team with the most sacrifice bunts usually won the title. That was the case in 1985, too. It may look like Hanshin won by hitting a lot, but we actually had a high number of sacrifice bunts,” Okada said of the Tigers’ first Japan Series champs, one of two Tigers pennant-winning teams to lead the league in sacrifices. They were first again last year as well, but fourth in sacrifices in 2005, when Okada managed his first CL pennant.

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Records: games of April 7, 2026

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The Nippon Ham home run streak ends, Kenta Maeda‘s search for his first Japan comeback win goes on, and Hiroto Saiki tied the Central League strikeout record with 16, although the big story might just be how he exited the game, and the curious lack of thunder this has attracted, a sign that Japanese baseball might be growing the hell up.

In pursuit of records

Japanese baseball has a curious relationship with records, and has a long history of risking injuries and meaningful wins so that players can strive for records.

With a chance to establish a CL record, Saiki was yanked after throwing 105 pitches through eight innings. Of the five pitchers in Japanese pro ball history to fan 16 through eight innings, Saiki is just the second to leave the game at that point.

Last June 6, Livan Moinelo came out for a pinch-hitter in the top of the ninth with SoftBank leading 2-0 in the ninth at Jingu Stadium after throwing 117 pitches before Roberto Osuna blew the save in the home half of a 3-2 loss. The record for strikeouts in a game is 19, set by Orix’s Koji Noda in 1995 and tied by Roki Sasaki in his 2022 perfect game.

At the time, SoftBank manager Hiroki Kokubo said Moinelo had looked like he was giving it the last drop of his energy in the eighth.

You know Japan is calming the hell down when this kind of outrageous managing – pulling a starter when he was in position to set a record without having already thrown 300 pitches–isn’t called out by every former player with access to a pen.

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