One of NPB’s four Thursday games was rained out, leaving the Central League-leading Hiroshima Carp to root for the Chunichi Dragons to sweep the second-place Yakult Swallows on a rainy night in the Kanto region.
The BayStars completed their Niigata-Yokohama split series with the Giants, while the league-leading Rakuten Eagles and the Lotte Marines had the Pacific League action all to themselves in Sendai.
With Nao Higashihama‘s no-hitter on Tuesday, a colleague at my unnamed day job asked if three nine-inning no hitters, counting Yudai Ono’s that was lost in the 10th, were a lot for less than two months of baseball.
So between baseball, statistical stuff, and a rant about an import player’s fielding, we have a lot going on.
Shall we get to it?
Tough times for hitters
Since 2019, offense in March and April has been declining, according to Delta Graphs, and this has been more pronounced in the Pacific League.
We didn’t have March or April games in 2020, so let’s just look at the changes from 2019 to 2021 to 2022.
Batting averages in March and April
| League | 2019 | 2021 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
| CL | .249 | .246 | .243 |
| PL | .245 | .237 | .227 |
The three teams that have been no-hit through nine innings on the road, the Orix Buffaloes, Hanshin Tigers, and Seibu Lions, all had team averages below the league average
| Team | League | Road average |
|---|---|---|
| Orix | .227 | .191 |
| Hanshin | .243 | .226 |
| Seibu | .227 | .211 |
The Tigers look like an outlier there, but they were playing at Nagoya Dome, where the Dragons this season have hit 30 points lower than in their road games.
I’m not saying it was a perfect storm with the pump primed for no-hitters. They still aren’t likely. If all 27 outs are made by league average hitters, the chance of a shutout in a league average park this year is about 1 in a 1,000.
Of course, games vary depending on the quality of the pitcher, hitters and fielders, and whether it’s at home or on the road. If Roki Sasaki strikes out 19 Orix hitters on the road, where Buffaloes hitters are batting .228 when the ball is in play, the chances are about one in eight.
Thursday’s games
Marines 5, Eagles 2: At Miyagi Stadium, Lotte’s imported hitters put on a show to back former Eagle Manabu Mima (1-4), who allowed two runs over six innings.
Leonys Martin walked and scored in the second inning, when Hiromi Oka homered to give Lotte the first lead for the second time in two days. Martin doubled and scored in the fourth on the first of Adeiny Hechavarria‘s two doubles.
Hechavarria doubled and scored in the seventh, and Brandon Laird led off the eighth with his third home run.
Takayuki Kishi (3-1) took the loss as Rakuten lost back-to-back games for the first time this season.
Swallows 3, Dragons 1: At Jingu Stadium, Hirotoshi Takanashi (3-2) outdueled 19-year-old Kotaro Ueda (0-1) who was making his major league debut five days after being signed from the Dragons’ developmental roster.
The teenager made some poor pitches in the first, when he gave up two runs on a Yasutaka Shiomi single, a Kotaro Yamasaki RBI double and a Tetsuto Yamada RBI single, but otherwise turned in an extremely solid debut, walking two, hitting one and allowing three runs on four hits over five innings.
Shiomi was the offensive bright spot in an otherwise forgettable series for the Swallows, flying home from first with no outs in the first, and doubling and scoring in the fifth, when he twisted his leg and left the game.
Scott McGough recorded his 10th save.
Giants 4, BayStars 1: At Yokohama Stadium, Tomoyuki Sugano (4-3) allowed a run in the first on doubles by Masayuki Kuwahara and Taishi Kusumoto.
Sugano, pitching for the first time since feeling elbow discomfort no April 29, got a break when the BayStars sacrificed their leadoff hitter to third, allowing him to crawl home as DeNA stranded a runner.
The Giants ace struck out eight, allowed five hits and two walks. Nobutaka Imamura threw strikes for a change in a 1-2-3 seventh, Rubby De La Rosa worked the eighth, and rookie Taisei Ota saved his 13th game.
Shinichi Onuki (1-2) surrendered back-to-back homers in the third to Gregory Polanco, his sixth, and Kazuma Okamoto, his 12th. Polanco had three hits but also failed to catch a ball in the gap in right for which he will surely be roasted the way his teammate Adam Walker was the other day.
Walker gets publicly roasted
Japan’s former players working as media analysts had the knives out for Adam Walker on Wednesday, a day after a run scored on his weak throw from left and two more scored when he got a bad read on a flare to left that fell in for an RBI single.
The old guys pretty much made it sound as if Walker, who has been the Giants’ best offensive performer this year, was personally responsible for their five-game losing streak. Neither of the plays was all that egregious. He can obviously be better, and probably will be given the amount of effort he has put into the other aspects of his game, his outstanding base running and his adapting to Japanese pitching.
But the general tone of the critics from Motononbu Tanishige, to Dave Okubo — one of the worst defensive catchers in living memory — was that Walker was keeping the Giants from winning.
What a load of horse shit.
Friday’s starting pitchers
It’s Roki Eve, and Sasaki is returning to Osaka Dome, the site of what is being treated in Japan as the crime of the century, umpire Kazuhiro Shirai telling Sasaki on April 24, to stop making faces when Shirai called borderline pitches balls.
Since then, Shirai has been pilloried by the public, attacked by the player’s union, and pretty much hung out to dry by NPB, which made a point of telling the world its umpires have been ordered to study the umpires’ Official Rules of Conduct.
Elsewhere, Chunichi’s Yudai Ono and Hanshin’s Koyo Aoyagi will both be back on the bump a week after they locked horns in a twin-gem 10-inning complete game.
Fighters vs Hawks: Sapporo Dome 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Hiromi Ito (3-3, 3.38) vs Kodai Senga (3-0, 1.26)
Lions vs Eagles: Seibu Dome 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Kona Takahashi (3-2, 1.50) vs Ryota Takinaka (1-1, 3.00)
Buffaloes vs Marines: Osaka Dome 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Daiki Tajima (0-1, 2.93) vs Roki Sasaki (3-0, 1.50)
Giants vs Dragons: Tokyo Dome 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Shosei Togo (4-2, 3.96) vs Yudai Ono (2-3, 2.72)
BayStars vs Tigers: Yokohama Stadium 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Shota Imanaga (0-0, 4.50) vs Koyo Aoyagi (3-1, 0.76)
Carp vs Swallows: Hiroshima Citizen’s Stadium 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Daichi Osera (4-1, 2.47) vs Juri Hara (3-2, 3.86)
Active roster moves 5/12/2022
Deactivated players can be re-activated from 5/22
Central League
Activated
| Swallows | P | 56 | Yuta Suzuki |
| Tigers | OF | 63 | Yutaro Itayama |
| Giants | P | 18 | Tomoyuki Sugano |
Dectivated
| Swallows | P | 28 | Daiki Yoshida |
| Tigers | P | 21 | Takumi Akiyama |
| Tigers | OF | 24 | Mel Rojas Jr. |
Pacific League
Activated
| Marines | OF | 79 | Leonys Martin |
Dectivated
| Marines | OF | 31 | Tsuyoshi Sugano |
| Eagles | P | 47 | Masaru Fujii |
| Fighters | P | 19 | Chihiro Kaneko |
| Fighters | P | 20 | Kenta Uehara |
| Fighters | IF | 5 | Renato Nunez |
| Lions | P | 17 | Wataru Matsumoto |
| Lions | C | 38 | Shoya Makino |
| Lions | IF | 50 | Seigo Nakayama |
Fighters vs Hawks: Sapporo Dome 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Hiromi Ito (3-3, 3.38) vs Kodai Senga (3-0, 1.26)
Lions vs Eagles: Seibu Dome 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Kona Takahashi (3-2, 1.50) vs Ryota Takinaka (1-1, 3.00)
Buffaloes vs Marines: Osaka Dome 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Daiki Tajima (0-1, 2.93) vs Roki Sasaki (3-0, 1.50)
Giants vs Dragons: Tokyo Dome 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Shosei Togo (4-2, 3.96) vs Yudai Ono (2-3, 2.72)
BayStars vs Tigers: Yokohama Stadium 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Shota Imanaga (0-0, 4.50) vs Koyo Aoyagi (3-1, 0.76)
Carp vs Swallows: Hiroshima Citizen’s Stadium 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Daichi Osera (4-1, 2.47) vs Juri Hara (3-2, 3.86)
Active roster moves 5/12/2022
Deactivated players can be re-activated from 5/22
Central League
Activated
| Swallows | P | 56 | Yuta Suzuki |
| Tigers | OF | 63 | Yutaro Itayama |
| Giants | P | 18 | Tomoyuki Sugano |
Dectivated
| Swallows | P | 28 | Daiki Yoshida |
| Tigers | P | 21 | Takumi Akiyama |
| Tigers | OF | 24 | Mel Rojas Jr. |
Pacific League
Activated
| Marines | OF | 79 | Leonys Martin |
Dectivated
| Marines | OF | 31 | Tsuyoshi Sugano |
| Eagles | P | 47 | Masaru Fujii |
| Fighters | P | 19 | Chihiro Kaneko |
| Fighters | P | 20 | Kenta Uehara |
| Fighters | IF | 5 | Renato Nunez |
| Lions | P | 17 | Wataru Matsumoto |
| Lions | C | 38 | Shoya Makino |
| Lions | IF | 50 | Seigo Nakayama |
