In which Japanese pro baseball’s answer to the questions from Mad Magazine’s “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” reached a new low, and we had some fun games as well.
Fukuoka Dome held its first game under its latest incarnation, see Thursday’s blog, and it seemed as if the broadcasters had a contractual obligation to mention the ballpark’s new naming sponsor a certain number of times, as they brought up the monumental occasion over and over, and even asked the game’s hero about it.
Saturday’s games
Giants 2, BayStars 1: At Yokohama Stadium, Kai Yokogawa (1-0) worked five scoreless innings, Kazuma Okamoto hit a second-inning leadoff homer off Anthony Kay (1-2) – who went seven innings, rookie Masaya Hagio followed with a single and scored on a sac fly by Takumi Oshiro. The BayStars got on the board on Toshiro Miyazaki‘s seventh-inning leadoff homer. Taisei Ota recorded his seventh save.
BayStars left fielder Taiki Sekine, who turned in a big catch on Friday gunned down two runners Saturday as they tried to stretch singles into doubles for his first two assists of the season. The only player in NPB with more than two is Nippon Ham’s Chusei Mannami, with four.
Carp 6, Dragons 4: At Nagoya Dome, Hiroshima’s Koki Ugusa scored Shogo Sakakura in the second with his third homer in five games, off Kodai Umetsu (0-3), and Chunichi’s Seiji Uebayashi hit a solo homer in the bottom of the inning, his first in the CL. Sakakura singled in scored in the fourth. Hiroshima’s Kaito Kozono singled in two in the seventh to make it 5-1.
With two outs in the bottom of the eighth, Chunichi’s Orlando Calixte hit his second homer, and Seiya Hosokawa scored Sho Nakata with his fifth home run.
Masato Morishita (2-0) struck out six over seven innings, while allowing a run, and Ryoji Kuribayashi earned his sixth save.
Tigers 5, Swallows 4: At Koshien Stadium, Yasutaka Shiomi, who sat out Friday’s game, played for all of one pitch, hitting Kotaro Otake’s first of the game out for his second homer before being replaced for defense. Domingo Santa doubled to open Yakult’s second, stole third and scored on Tetsuto Yamada‘s sac fly.
Singles by Sheldon Neuse, Seishiro Sakamoto and Ryuhei Obata got Hanshin their first run in the bottom of the second off Cy Sneed (0-2), before they took the lead in the fifth on an Obata single and Koji Chikamoto‘s third homer. Shota Morishita walked, took second on a wild pitch and scored on a Yusuke Oyama single.
Santana hit the first of three seventh-inning singles and scored on a Norichika Aoki walk. Chikamoto singled and scored in the bottom of the seventh on a Morishita single. Yakult’s Ryusei Takeoka led off the ninth against Javy Guerra with his first home run, but Guerra stranded the potential tying and go-ahead runs on base for his fifth save.
Kotaro Otake (3-2) allowed three runs on six hits over 6-1/3 innings, striking out six without a walk.
After the game, Swallows manager Shingo Takatsu revealed that Shiomi had felt a twinge in his lower back during BP, and that he left the game as a precaution.
Fighters 9, Buffaloes 0: At Kitahiroshima Taxpayers Burden Field, Hiromi Ito (3-0) didn’t allow a hit until the sixth inning, and Nippon Ham gave Orix’s Ren Mukunoki a warm reception in his three-inning season debut.
Gosuke Kato singled and scored in the Fighters’ four-run first off Mukunoki on a Chusei Mannami double. Ariel Martinez singled, Yua Tamiya doubled in a run and two more scored on Yuya Gunji‘s single. Tamiya had two more RBI doubles in the seventh and eighth, when the Fighters tacked on five more runs.
Eagles 4, Marines 1: At Chiba Marine Stadium, Seiryu Uchi (1-1) allowed a run over seven innings as Rakuten came from behind to deal Lotte its seventh straight loss.
Lotte scored in the third via a one-out walk, a Katsuya Kakunaka double and a Gregory Polanco sac fly off Uchi. Marines lefty C.C. Mercedes struck out seven without a walk over six scoreless innings, but Rakuten opened for business at the expense of Hirokazu Sawamura (0-1) in the seventh. Yuya Ogo and Kazuki Murabayashi singled with one out, Hideto Asamura doubled, Hiroaki Shimauchi tripled in two, and Toshiki Abe‘s single capped the four-run rally. Takahiro Norimoto earned his fourth save.
Hawks 2, Lions 1: At Fukuoka Dome, both starting pitchers allowed a run in seven innings. Seibu’s Yuji Kaneko hit his first home run in two years off a high straight fastball from Livan Moinelo to open the scoring in the third. The lefty pitched out of a seventh-inning jam and was taken off the hook in the home half on a Ryoya Kurihara leadoff walk, a sacrifice and an Akira Nakamura pinch-hit single off Tatsuya Imai.
The Hawks sealed their fourth straight win after Yuki Yanagita robbed Kaneko of a likely RBI double in the 10th before Ukyo Shuto doubled, and scored from third when Hikaru Kawase, who entered as a pinch-runner, hammered one over the heads of the pulled-in outfield.
The idiocy of the day came when the first question in the hero interview was “How does it feel to have the first walk-off hit at the ballpark under its new name of “Sponsor B Sponsor A Dome?”
“You know, it didn’t matter at all,” was the appropriate answer. I suppose SoftBank needs to train its ballplayers to be more media savvy.
Moinelo has now received 13 runs scored behind him when he was the pitcher of record in a span of 36 innings from five starts, with 11 coming in the lone game in which he was credited with a win. He’s allowed six runs.
