The series moved out of Osaka Tuesday to neighboring Hyogo Prefecture, and Hanshin’s iconic Koshien Stadium after each team scored an 8-0 victory at Osaka UFO Dome.
Tuesday’s Game 3
Tigers Buffaloes : At Koshien Stadium, rookie Kohei Azuma allowed a run on five hits and a walk over five innings to improve to 8-0 in his major league career, and Orix’s “Elmore Leonard 3:10 to Yuma” gang, Yuma Tongu and Yuma Tongu, helped put four runs on the board as the Buffaloes took a 2-1 series lead after some scary work from two of Orix’s four relief pitchers.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto on Monday became the second pitcher to win three straight Eiji Sawamura Awards, after Masaichi Kaneda, who dominated Japanese pitching for 15 years after he turned pro as an overgrown 16-year-old in 1950 and won 400 career games.
DeNA’s Katsuki Azuma arguably had a better season in terms of the pitching stats the four-man panel consults, but Yamamoto played for Japan in the World Baseball Classic and this year and became the third pitcher, and the first since 1941 when Japan’s balls were as dead as can be, to throw no-hitters in consecutive years.
