Only one team remained undefeated in Japanese pro baseball Tuesday, when three teams entered with 3-0 records. The Lotte Marines, unbeaten on the field, were however, beaten by the rainy weather in eastern Japan that also washed out the games in Sendai and Chiba. Meanwhile, the SoftBank Hawks took a hit, losing Japan’s biggest run producer over the past two seasons, Kensuke Kondo, while the Japanese sports media displayed once more its fetish for trivial counting and reporting on crying athletes.
Tuesday’s games
Hawks 5, Fighters 1: At Kitahiroshima Taxpayer’s Burden Field, Nippon Ham’s Yuki James Nomura hit his third home run in two games, but SoftBank, playing its first game for the foreseeable future without Kondo, who is due to have lower back surgery in the coming days, opened up their lead with fifth-inning solo homers from Yuki Yanagita and Kenta Imamiya. Ito allowed all five runs on nine hits and a walk.
Behind seven innings from Livan Moinelo, Yanagita singled Ukyo Shuto in the first off Hiromi Ito. Shuto doubled in Richard Sunagawa in the second and scored on an Akira Nakamura single. Moinelo allowed two hits a walk and a hit batsman and two relievers retired the last six hitters as Nippon Ham suffered its first loss.
Dragons 3, Giants 2: At Nagoya Dome, Kyle Muller had a memorable Japan debut. The 27-year-old lefty allowed three hits, including a game-tying solo homer to Kazuma Okamoto while striking out nine and walking none over five innings. He left with the game tied 1-1 before former Giant Sho Nakata set up the go-ahead run off highly touted lefty Haruto Inoue with a seventh-inning leadoff double. Takaya Ishikawa doubled and scored in the first, and singled in the eighth to help set up Orlando Calixte‘s sacrifice fly off Alberto Baldonado.
The Giants put seven runners on over the final three innings against three Dragons’ relievers but managed just one run on Takumi Oshiro’s second pinch-hit RBI single in two games as Yomiuri suffered its first loss.
Sho Iwasaki earned the win in relief, his first since joining Chunichi from SoftBank in 2022 and having Tommy John surgery that September.
Tears and numbers
Because this is Japan, where where the sports media’s obsession with reporting numbers is petty enough to make the Count from Sesame Street turn beet red, we learned it was his first win in 1,413 days.
Not only did Japan’s sports pages tell us how many pitches were thrown in games back in the day when Tommy John meant nothing more than a crafty left-handed ground-ball pitcher, but they tell us how many pitches are thrown in bullpens by rehabbing from injury, including how many are thrown from a mound and how many while the catcher is squatting rather than standing. And don’t get me started on batting practice “home runs.”
On Tuesday, however, we got both barrels, a big number, AND a tearful hero interview from the winner.
BayStars 7, Tigers 1: At Osaka UFO Dome, Andre Jackson, one of DeNA’s Japan Series pitching heroes, picked up where he left off last autumn with nine strikeouts over seven innings. He allowed a run on second-inning Shota Morishita double and a Seiya Kinami single but that was it. Shugo Maki tied it for the visitors in the third with his first homer, off Hiroto Saiki, who surrendered the lead in the BayStars’ three-run sixth. Maki had a two-run single in a three-run BayStars ninth.
In other news, former Carp and Marines pitcher Jay Jackson has retired and I had a few things to say about his time here and what he taught me.
