On Sunday in Japan, we got within one out of it really becoming “Lucky old lefty Day” with both 44-year-old Masanori Ishikawa and 43-year-old Tsuyoshi Wada on the bump for their teams. The Lotte Marines put their longest win streak in 19 years on the line
In other news, actually from Saturday when I didn’t blog, the SoftBank Hawks have apparently lost Yuki Yanagita for the remainder of the regular season. On Sunday, the DeNA BayStars deactivated submarine right-hander Hayate Nakagawa.
Sunday’s games:
Swallows 4, Eagles 0, 5 innings rain: At Miyagi Stadium, weather prevented Rakuten from getting at-bats against Yakult’s bullpen, allowing Ishikawa (1-1) to earn his first shutout in nine years on four hits and no walks. Yakult’s first four batters reached against Takayuki Kishi (2-5), who trailed 3-0 on back-to-back doubles from Haruki Nishikawa and Hideki Nagaoka, and a sweetly struck 13th home run from Munetaka Murakami.
Ishikawa tied the record for consecutive seasons with at least one win at 23. He joins Hall of Fame lefties Kimiyasu Kudo and Masahiro Yamamoto, and current BayStars skipper Daisuke Miura. Ishikawa, however, is the first to accomplish the feat starting from his first pro season. He had been tied with Hall of Famer Tetsuya Yoneda at 22 from the start of his career.
Fighters 9, BayStars 2: At Kitahiroshima Taxpayers Burden Field, rookie Ren Fukushima (1-0) allowed two runs over seven innings for his first career victory in five starts and Nippon Ham salvaged the final game of the series behind a pair of RBI triples from Tatsuki Mizuno, a three-run homer from Yua Tamiya, and a two-run homer, the first of Shun Mizutani‘s career. DeNA starter Shinichi Onuki (2-7) allowed eight runs over four innings.
New Fighters import Aneurys Zabala, who has hit 162-kph this season, was clocked at 161 on Sunday, the fastest recorded at Nippon Ham’s new park.
Giants 7, Lions 1: At the domed stadium formerly known as “Prince,” Yomiuri took the rubber match with Tomoyuki Sugano (5-0) striking out seven over seven scoreless innings. Seibu’s Bo Takahashi (1-4) allowed two hits through four innings before the wheels fell off on four-straight two-out hits in the fifth. Elier Hernandez went 3-for-5 with a run and two RBIs for Yomiuri, whose pitchers did not issue a walk or hit a batter.
Tigers 1, Marines 0: At Chiba Marine Stadium, Hanshin’s Hiroto Saiki (6-1) threw a six-hitter, and Shota Morishita homered off C.C. Mercedes (1-2) as the Tigers snapped Lotte’s 15-game unbeaten streak (11 wins and four ties). The game was the sixth straight that Lotte trailed entering the ninth, and the first time the Marines failed to tie it. Gregory Polanco, who three drove in the tying run in the ninth, grounded out to end the game
“He (Saiki) did this to us last year, too,” Lotte skipper Masato Yoshii said. “He’s a good pitcher with a variety of breaking pitches, and he mixed them well.”
Dragons 2, Buffaloes 1, 12 innings: At Osaka UFO Dome, Orix came down with a case of Chunichitus, an affliction that prevents teams from cashing in scoring opportunities, in its loss to the Dragons. With two on and one out, Kenya Wakatsuki singled in a run, only for Yuma Tongu to be caught off base and the Buffaloes to leave the bases full. Orix stranded eight runners over a three-inning stretch, Alex Dickerson tied it with an eighth-inning home run, Sho Nakata doubled in the go-ahead run in the 12th and Chunichi’s bullpen retired the last 13 Buffaloes. Raidel Martinez recorded his 17th save.
Hawks 5, Carp 3: At Fukuoka “Your company’s name can go here” Dome, in what might constitute elder abuse, Hiroshima veteran Kosuke Tanaka hit a two-out, three-run ninth-inning homer off reliever Darwinzon Hernandez, costing Wada his third win. Kensuke Kondo, however, completed the series sweep of league leaders with his second homer of the game, and eighth of the year, a two-run 10th-inning walk-off homer to complete the series sweep. Kondo came to bat after rookie Riku Ogata fouled off two two-strike pitches en route to a two-out 10th-inning walk, drawing praise from skipper Hiroki Kokubo.
“He had a good two-strike approach, going the opposite way with fastballs in the zone and fouling them off and laying off low pitches. This is a guy who has had few at-bats at this level and he showed me he’s got something we can use.”
Kondo opened the scoring with solo shot in the second, followed by back-to-back doubles from Akira Nakamura and Tatsuru Yanagimachi. Kondo walked and scored in the fourth on a Yanagimachi single to make it 3-0.
Wada struck out six over five scoreless innings.
Hawks’ Yanagita hamstrung
SoftBank Hawks outfielder Yuki Yanagita suffered a right-hamstring injury that is expected to sideline him for four months, effectively ruling him out for the remainder of the regular season. Although he’s been nagged by small injuries since his monster 2015 season, Yanagita has played in 100-plus games in 10 of the last 11 seasons.
The one outlier was when he suffered left hamstring strain in April 2019. The Hawks’ hyper caution in bringing back to the active roster prevented him from amassing the service time he needed to file for international free agency after the 2020 season. Realizing he would not be able to move to MLB until 2022 at the age of 34, he instead signed a seven-year contract after the 2019 season.
Easily the best hitter in NPB from 2015 to 2018, Yanagita could easily have been PL MVP each year, but has collected eight Best Nine awards. This year, he’s slashing .293/.405/.414 with four home runs, his lowest career total since he hit none in five 2011 at-bats in his first pro season out of Hiroshima University of Economics.
DeNA drops Nakagawa
Hayate Nakagawa, a submarine right-hander who was dropped from Orix’s developmental roster over the winter and signed by DeNA, has been deactivated after feeling discomfort in his right shoulder Saturday, when he allowed two runs over four innings. Manager Daisuke Miura said the pitcher would see a doctor when the team returns to Yokohama.
Nakagawa is currently 2-0 with a 5.54 ERA. The former high school slugger is 3-for-11 with a homer and three RBIs.
