Roki came, and the Marines conquered, when the three national team pitchers who started combined for 21 scoreless innings. Masahiro Tanaka, who’d said last year he’d be willing to suit up for the national team, started his game like he should have been there but was unable to maintain that in one of the night’s two high-scoring games.
Friday’s games
Marines 3, Hawks 2: At Chiba Marine Stadium, Roki Sasaki (3-0) was not the untouchable strikeout machine of his first two starts this year, but still ran his scoreless innings streak to 20, as he struck out eight over seven innings while allowing a walk and three hits.
Shota Takeda (0-1) kept Lotte from giving Sasaki a lead until a three-run Marines fourth inning. Lotte catcher Toshiya Sato tripled in two with two outs and scored on a Taiga Hirasawa single. The Hawks got on the board in the eighth against Luis Perdomo with Akira Nakamura singling in Shu Masuda.
“I struggled early but with a three-run lead I was able to pitch well enough,” Sasaki said. “My good pitching is largely connected with the team scoring early for me.”
Swallows 3, Giants 0: At Jingu Stadium, Swallows lefty Keiji Takahashi (2-1) proved to have a lot of best friends — pitchers’ best friends that is, getting four double plays over six innings, while Yakult’s new closer, Giants throwaway Kazuto Taguchi, sealed his sixth save fittingly on Yomiuri’s sixth double play of the night.
Instead of heading down to the left-field corner and the stairs up to the visitors’ clubhouse, the Giants players were summoned to a team meeting behind the dugout when the game ended.
Yakult took a two-run lead against Tyler Beede (0-3) on two walks and a Jose Osuna first-inning single, and a pair of hits in the second. After Chunichi’s Aristides Aquino‘s mishaps in left led to a string of Swallows runs during the week, Yakult fans must be thinking that it’s opposing left fielders’ job to kick to the ball around.
Giants left fielder Adam Walker kept that tradition alive in the second inning, when he played Nagaoka’s sinking liner into a double, allowing Nagaoka to score on a Ryusei Takeoka single. To his credit, Walker made an outstanding catch in the eighth to help keep the game from getting completely out of hand.
Swallows-Giants highlights
Beede kept the Swallows in check for most of his five innings, before they began pressuring the Giants bullpen and broke through for a run in the seventh on a Domingo Santana RBI double.
Eagles 8, Fighters 7: At Miyagi Stadium, Rakuten came off the canvas after the Fighters knocked out Masahiro Tanaka in a seven-run fifth inning. After trailing 7-1, Haruki Nishikawa‘s leadoff homer in the eighth made it a one-run game, and the first three runners reached in the ninth against Seigi Tanaka (0-1), who then surrendered back-to-back RBI singles to Nishikawa and Tsuyoshi Yamasaki.
Tanaka did, however, record his 2,500th major league strikeout between Japan and the U.S.
Masahiro Tanaka gave up a leadoff hit in the first on a catchable ball, but then dominated, getting ahead in counts and retiring 12 straight before Chusei Mannami hit a mistake for a leadoff double. He scored on a triple from rookie Taiki Narama, who scored on a wild pitch, and the Fighters began punching above their weight.
BayStars 1, Carp 0: At New Hiroshima Citizens Stadium, Shota Imanaga (1-0), the starter and winning pitcher of March’s World Baseball Classic final, showed off in front of his relatives with eight innings in his belated season debut.
“My family came up from Fukuoka, my cousins, my grandmother, and I’m glad I could show them something,” said Imanaga, who allowed five hits but no walks while striking out six to outduel Robert Corniel (0-1), who went 7-2/3 innings, and was charged with allowing the game’s only run in the eighth.
Yasuaki Yamasaki struck out two in the ninth to record his fifth save.
Buffaloes 7, Lions 5: At Osaka Dome, Keita Nakagawa tripled in the go-ahead run in the sixth inning and scored an insurance run that held up.
David MacKinnon‘s two-run first-inning double against fellow first-year import Jacob Nix put the Lions in front early, and rookie Ryosuke Kodama‘s RBI single made it 3-0 in the second.
Lions right-hander Tatsuya Imai started the season with 19 scoreless innings before Yuma Mune singled to open the fifth and Yutaro Sugimoto followed with his fifth home run. A walk and two singles tied it, and Ryo Ota’s third singled of the game put Orix in front 4-3. Masahiro Nishino capped the rally by squeezing in a run.
A two-run Takeya Nakamura homer, his third, tied it in a showdown of veterans with the gray-haired 39-year-old Nakamura getting the better of 40-year-old Motoki Higa.
Nakagawa, however, tripled home rookie Tokumasa Chano and scored on a single by former Lion Tomoya Mori in the home half. The Lions would get the tying runs on base with two outs in the ninth before Yoshihisa Hirano ended the game with a strikeout to record his fifth save.
Dragons 4, Tigers 1: At Nagoya Dome, the Dragons came from a run down in a two-run first off Koyo Aoyagi (1-2). Takaya Ishikawa singled in a run off Koyo Aoyagi () and Hayato Misowaki doubled in another. With two outs in the second, Yohei Oshima singled in and scored his second run after a walk and a Zoilo Almonte single.
Dragons starter Shinnosuke Ogasawara (2-0) allowed a run over seven innings while striking out nine and singling in a fourth-inning run. Raidel Martinez worked the ninth for his fifth save.
