Nippon Professional Baseball played its final games Sunday before this week’s all-star break, with Tomoyuki Sugano picking more low hanging fruit with some help from a new teammate. Livan Moinelo was solid again, Tyler Austin hit another big homer on a night when no matter how many DeNA hit, it wouldn’t be enough.
Nippon Ham came from behind twice thanks to an outstanding effort from its bullpen, while Orix and Hiroshima got crushed in Kansai.
Sunday’s games:
Giants 4, Dragons 1: At Nagoya Dome, Tomoyuki Sugano allowed a run over six innings and new Giant Gakuto Wakabayashi hit a two-run home run to lead Yomiuri past Chunichi. Yomiuri, looking for its first Central League pennant in four years, bounced back from a 1-0 loss on Friday to take the final two games of the series.
The 34-year-old Sugano, a two-time winner of the Eiji Sawamura Award as Japanese pro baseball’s most impressive starting pitcher, improved to 8-2. He allowed five hits while striking out five and walking none.
Wakabayashi made it 2-0 Giants in the fifth inning with his first home run since being traded from the Pacific League’s Seibu Lions on June 25.
With a four-run lead in the sixth, Sugano surrendered a home run to Sho Nakata, who was released by Yomiuri in December, two and a half years after he was discarded by Nippon Ham.
Six of Sugano’s wins have come against the worst two CL teams, three each against the fifth-place Dragons and last-place Swallows. His other two came against title-contender Hiroshima, and the team with Japan’s worst record, the Seibu Lions.
Hawks 1, Lions 0: At the domed stadium formerly known as “Prince,” Livan Moinelo (6-3) won an outstanding pitchers’ duel with Seibu’s Chihiro Sumida (6-8) threw 101 pitches in his complete-game defeat. Ryoya Kurihara had three of SoftBank’s seven hits off Sumida, his third one plating Ukyo Shuto with two outs in the ninth.
Moinelo struck out nine while allowing five singles and no walks, as only one Lion runner got as far as second base before the ninth inning, when Seibu loaded the bases against Yuki Matsumoto, who recorded his fifth save.
The Hawks took two out of three, having lost the middle game after interim manager Hisanobu Watanabe pulled an “Arthur Rhodes” on Hawks reliever Darwinzon Hernandez in the eighth inning by having the umps order him to remove a ring from his left hand before he walked two batters and surrendered the tie-breaking runs.
Eagles 12, Buffaloes 5: At Hotto Motto Field Kobe, Daichi Suzuki‘s two-run home run capped a three-run first inning against Orix rookie Kazuma Sato (1-1). Rakuten lefty Masaru Fujii (7-1) allowed four runs, two earned, over seven innings. Eagles leadoff man Yuya Ogo went 4-for-5 with a double, a run and two RBIs, while Nos. 3 and 4 hitters, Ryosuke Tatsumi and Hideto Asamura, each scored twice and drove in three.
The Buffaloes got a two-run second-inning homer from Yutaro Sugimoto, but were still swept in their Kobe home away from home.
The Buffaloes lost infielder Ryo Ota to an ankle injury, while 2023 PL rookie of the year Shumpeita Yamashita, who was expected to be a pillar of their rotation this season, made his first career relief appearance, in which he surrendered a leadoff homer to Asamura before retiring the last three batters he faced.
Fighters 10, Marines 6: At Chiba Marine Stadium, Ariel Martinez drove in three runs, including two with a game-tying two-run seventh-inning double before Kotaro Kiyomiya capped the three-run Fighters’ rally with a solo homer. Kiyomiya put the final icing on the cake with a two-run homer to cap a three-run ninth.
Neftali Soto gave Lotte the lead with a first-inning RBI single, and tied it 4-4 with a three-run homer in the fifth, but after Kyota Fujiwara‘s sixth-inning homer made it 5-4, the Fighters bullpen retired the last 11 Lotte hitters.
The Fighters have won five straight to go into the all-star break one game back of the second-place Marines, losers of six straight, and 11 back of SoftBank.
Tigers 12, Carp 3: At Koshien Stadium, Hanshin found its offensive mojo with a pair of six-run innings after being shut out 1-0 in the first two games of their series against Hiroshima. While trying to protect an early 1-0 lead, Allen Kuri (4-6) allowed the leadoff man to reach in each of the first three innings. Ryutaro Umeno‘s leadoff double in the third, however, kick-started a six-run rally, that he finished with an RBI single against the Carp bullpen.
Swallows 8, BayStars 7, 11 innings: At Jingu “Tokyo’s sacrifice to corporate greed and governmental malfeasance” Stadium, Yakult overcame a pair of late two-run homers.
Tyler Austin‘s two-run ninth-inning homer tied it off Yakult’s latest closer, Naofumi Kizawa. Keita Sano hit a two-run homer in the 11th off Reiji Kozawa (2-6), who got the win when the Swallows sent seven batters to the plate in the home half, and the only out DeNA recorded was on a sacrifice before Jose Osuna ended it with an RBI single.
Yakult’s Yoshinobu Okugawa and DeNA’s Anthony Kay – the guest on Monday’s Japan Baseball Weekly Podcast – both made early exits. Okugawa surrendered second-inning solo homers to Shugo Maki and Toshiro Miyazaki and then walked two and hit a batter with the bases loaded in the third. He went four before being replaced by a pinch-hitter, who singled in a run to make it 3-3.
