Five more teams failed to score Sunday in Japanese baseball, although to be fair, three of those teams did not get a full nine innings worth of chances as two games were shortened by rain. Still, entering Sunday’s games, home runs in the Central League were down 47 percent from the previous three years, while the PL blast rate was down by 35%%. Still six teams each played six games, and teams failed to score 18 percent of the time, scored just one run 9.7 percent of the time, and two runs 15.3 percent of the time.
There was no blog on Saturday, because I was rushing to get home and left it in a word file at the office with no way to retrieve it, so I’ll share a couple of goodies I picked up yesterday before the Lions-Eagles game.
But first the games…
Sunday’s games
Fighters 5, Marines 0: At Kitahiroshima Taxpayers Burden Field, Fighters complete sweep of Marines with back-to-back complete game shutouts. After being flummoxed by hard-throwing Koki Kitayama on Saturday, soft-tosser Takayuki Kato scattered nine hits and a walk, and Chusei Mannami and Ariel Martinez hit back-to-back homers in a five-run fourth off Atsuki Taneichi.
Buffaloes 3, Hawks 1: At Fukuoka Dome, Hiroya Miyagi (2-2) struck out 11 in a five-hit shutout, and Shuhei Fukuda scored each of the three times he reached base. Yuma Tongu snapped a 1-1 tie with a fifth-inning single off Carter Stewart Jr. (0-1) who allowed five hits, five walks and a hit batsman in his five innings. A Masahiro Nishino double opened the scoring in the third, and Kensuke Kondo tied in the fourth with his fourth home run. Kondo struck out on a check swing to end the game with the tying runs on base.
Carp 0, Giants 0, 5 innings: At New Hiroshima Citizens Stadium, Hiroshima’s Daichi Osera and Yomiuri’s Rei Takahashi each threw five scoreless innings before rain claimed this one as a tie.
Eagles 1, Lions 0: At the domed stadium formerly known as “Prince,” Masaru Fujii (1-1) and four relievers combined on a five-hit shutout as Rakuten takes the rubber match despite a quality start from Seibu ace Kona Takahashi, who left his start a week earlier with symptoms of heat exhaustion.
Tigers 3, Dragons 0, 7 innings rain: At Koshien Stadium, Teruaki Sato broke up a scoreless game with a three-run home run, his third, off Takahiro Matsuba (1-1) in the sixth inning. Hiroto Saiki (2-1) struck out eight over seven innings, and the game was called before Hanshin batted in the bottom of the seventh, as the Tigers complete a three-game sweep and move past Chunichi into first place.
BayStars 8, Swallows 3: At Jingu “Tokyo’s Sacrifice to Corporate Greed and Governmental Malfeasance” Stadium, the first 10 runs to score came with just 10 hits between the two teams. DeNA’s Shinichi Onuki (1-3) allowed two runs on three walks and three hits, while Yakult’s Miguel Yajure (3-1) combined good movement with poor command, walked two, hit two and gave up six hits, most of which were well placed rather than well hit en route to allowing seven runs in 1-1/3 innings.
Shugo Maki celebrated his 26th birthday with his second homer of the year, while Munetaka Murakami hit his fourth and his third against DeNA after the game was all but decided.
Words of wisdom from Kona Takahashi
The day before pitchers are scheduled to start in Japan, their team’s PR section typically makes them available for a short press scrum. Since Kona Takahashi has talked about playing in MLB, I went to see if I could grab a few minutes with him but had to settle for giving him a chance to practice his English with me and encouraging him to pitch for the San Francisco Giants when he does go after the press scrum.
Takahashi’s start came a week after he was lifted from his season debut due to symptoms of heat exhaustion. This was all quite weird since he pitched high school ball in Gunma Prefecture which is pretty darn hot in the summer, and it wasn’t that hot up in Seibu Land last week.
He was asked what he learned and this is what he had to say:
“I need to be careful, of course. But the real thing I learned from this is to train in spats instead of long pants. I’ve always trained in long pants. I couldn’t believe how much cooler the spats were. The difference was unbelievable, and I highly recommend it. It was like wearing shorts. In fact, you (reporters) should all come to the park in shorts. It’s OK if you do.”
My colleague the rugby writer says it is common to see sports journalists in other sports coming to venues dressed in shorts, but in Japan a lot of the media still comes adorned in dress shirts and jackets.
Sometimes all you need is pizza
I also caught up with new Lions reliever Abner Abreu. Asked about the challenges of spring training in Japan, he said the extreme workload was tough but the huge need for extra caloric intake due to the unaccustomed work was complicated by a lack of familiar food. He said he badly wanted comfort food, and craved pizza, but unlike three of the teams that train in Miyazaki City, the Lions camp is really remote, where there was no chance of popping out for one in the evening.
