It was a fun night in NPB on Wednesday, which ended with Chunichi’s former wunderkind Akira Neo doing a hero interview. Elsewhere, Kona Takahashi looked like his old self, the Nippon Ham Fighters resumed their home run attack after a day off, with the lone dinger spoiling one of the season’s best pitching performances, and the Yakult Swallows finally sacrificed.
Wednesday’s games
Swallows 3, Tigers 2: Easton Lucas was sharp in his second Japan outing for Hanshin, allowing a first-inning run on a fluke triple and a sacrifice fly while striking out six over five innings. The Tigers got some good swings in the first to take the lead against Yakult starter Kengo Matsumoto, who limited the damage on four hits and a walk to just two runs. Lucas pitched out of the only serious jam he faced, when he surrendered back-to-back no-out singles in the fifth followed by the Swallows’ first sacrifice bunt of the season.
Yakult took a 3-2 lead with two outs and two on in the sixth on a Shu Masuda single and a Yoshihiro Akahane double before four relievers made the margin hold up.
Buffaloes 9, Marines 1: Ryoma Nishikawa doubled in two first-inning runs, and Yuma Mune singled, doubled and walked from the leadoff spot and drove in two with a fifth-inning double off Lotte starter Andre Jackson. Anderson Espinoza repeatedly pitched out of trouble as he allowed one run over six innings.
Dragons 6, BayStars 4, 11 innings: Akira Neo, once one of Japan’s most highly touted amateurs as a slugging infielder who tried his hand as a two-way player before converting full-time to a pitcher, won his first career game on the mound, when he struck out two of the three batters he faced in the 10th inning.
Chunichi’s Seiya Hosokawa hit a two-run first-inning homer off his former team. DeNA’s Cooper Hummel‘s towering two-run second-inning shot over the foul pole was taken away and ruled foul on review. After Hummel struck out swinging, he suggested with a gesture that home plate umpire Masato Gunji, working in just the sixth major league game of his career, should see an optometrist. Yoshitomo Tsutsugo, however, tied it with a two-run jack in the third.
Dragons manager Kazuki Inoue, borrowing from Yakult Swallows skipper Takahiro Ikeyama’s playbook, batted his starting pitcher eighth, leaving shortstop Kaito Muramatsu in the ninth spot, from where he drove in runs with a tie-breaking sixth-inning sacrifice fly and an eighth-inning single. Hummel, after going 0-for-3, finally managed to tie the score in the eighth with a two-run RBI single off Humberto Mejia.
Chunichi’s Yuki Saito–Not THAT Yuki Saito–escaped a two-out bases-loaded jam in the ninth, Neo took out the bottom of the order in the 10th, and Jason Vosler, who reached base four times, broke the tie in the 11th with an RBI infield single with an insurance run scoring on an errant throw.
Lions 2, Hawks 1: Seibu’s Kona Takahashi struck out 11 over eight shutout innings, rookie catcher Taiga Kojima homered in the first, and Seiya Watanabe homered in the eighth, off Darwinzon Hernandez. Hakua Iwaki allowed a run on two hits and a leadoff walk but retired the last three batters for the save. Seibu’s Lin An-ko went 1-for-3 against Taiwan international teammate Hsu Jo-hsi, who worked seven innings for SoftBank.
Giants 2, Carp 1: Yomiuri’s Masahiro Tanaka surrendered an unearned run, while striking out five batters over seven innings. Hiroshima’s Shohei Mori worked seven scoreless innings, and Taylor Hearn handed the ball off to Shota Nakazaki in the ninth. A day after recording his first save in seven years, Nakazaki surrendered a leadoff double to Trey Cabbage, and a two-run homer to Yuta Izuguchi, who had three of the Giants’ eight hits. Raidel Martinez earned his second save.
Fighters 1, Eagles 0: Nippon Ham’s Rodolfo Castro cast the lone shadow on Tatsuki Koja‘s one-hitter with fourth-inning leadoff home run. Koja walked one and faced just two batters over the minimum, but was outdueled by Nippon Ham’s Koki Kitayama, who struck out 10 over eight innings, and reliever Tasei Yanagawa as the two combined on a four-hit shutout. Castro’s second homer of the season snapped the Fighters’ homerless game streak at one.
