A day after we had four shutouts in six games, we had two out of five on Wednesday, when one league leader responded to tough injury news with a one-sided win that came within two outs of a four-hit complete-game shutout. We also had a kind of longevity record of the type that Japan’s media fusses about without cause.
Wednesday’s games
Buffaloes 8, Eagles 2: At Miyagi Stadium, Daiki Tajima (4-2) came within two outs of replicating Hiroya Miyagi‘s four-hit shutout from Tuesday night, but was chased by a double and a Hideto Asamura homer in the ninth.
The Buffaloes, who lost 2021 Pacific League home run champ to injury earlier this week, got more bad news Wednesday when 2019 PL MVP Tomoya Mori was diagnosed with a bone bruise after taking a foul ball off his leg over the weekend.
His replacement behind the plate, Kenya Wakatsuki, drove in Orix’s first run, while Marwin Gonzalez singled, scored twice, and hit his second homer in two days for the Buffaloes, who roughed up veteran right-hander Takayuki Kishi (1-2) for five runs, three earned, in 2-1/3 innings.
Fighters 6, Hawks 3: At Fukuoka Dome, Fighters submariner Kenya Suzuki blew a 1-0 lead in the fourth inning. Yuki Yanagita tied it with an RBI double and scored on a Tatsuru Yanagimachi single. With one out and a runner in scoring position in the fifth, Suzuki was yanked, costing him the win when Ariel Martinez tied it in the sixth with a two-run home run homer and Arismendy Alcanatara followed with one of his own.
Yuki James Nomura homered in the first for the Fighters off starter and former closer Yuito Mori, and singled and scored in the eighth, when Alcantara capped the two-run inning with an RBI single.
Yanagita got a run back in the ninth with his sixth home run.
Swallows 5, Tigers 0: At Koshien Stadium, Japanese baseball’s oldest active player, lefty Masanori Ishikawa (1-1) won a game for the 22nd straight season, which is one short of the record of 23 shared by Hall of Fame lefties Kimiyasu Kudo and Masahiro Yamamoto, but which tied the “record” of right-handed Hall of Famer Tetsuya “the Gasoline Tank” Yoneda by winning a game in 22 straight years, beginning with his first year of pro ball. Kudo and Yamamoto may hold THE record, but that can’t stop Japan’s media from creating subsets and calling those records for the purposes of headlines.
Yuki Nishi (1-3) issued a pair of two-out walks before hitting a batter and surrendering a two-run Jose Osuna single.
The 43-year-old Ishikawa went 5-1/3 innings, struck out two and allowed four hits. He failed to get a hit that would have set the record for most consecutive seasons with a hit by a pitcher in Japanese baseball.
Dragons-Carp highlights
Marines 3, Lions 2: At Seibu Dome, Gregory Polanco opened the scoring off Dietrich Enns (1-5) with a two-run third-inning single, and Lotte scored a vital insurance run off Bo Takahashi in the sixth. David MacKinnon walked and scored in the fifth on a Hotaka Yamakawa double off Kazuya Ojima (3-1), and hit his sixth home run, in the seventh off the lefty. Naoya Masuda worked the ninth for his 10th save.
Carp 4, Dragons 0: At Nagoya Dome, Allen Kuri (2-1) threw a four-hit shutout, his first in three years, and Ryan McBroom‘s no-out bases-loaded two-run single opened the scoring in the third before Ryoma Nishikawa made it 3-0 with a sac fly.
It was the 10th time this season that the Dragons were shut out.
