The new playoffs are here and surprise, surprise, I was at a ballpark, where I got to see Carter Stewart Jr. and Roki Sasaki square off. It wasn’t quite a fair fight, but Sasaki, who has been slowly recovering his fitness since he developed a fever on Sept. 24, was as good as he’s ever been.
There was another game in Hiroshima, an 11-inning nail-biter, and we have two elimination games Sunday. Man this is fun.
Saturday’s games
Carp 3, Deniers 2, 11 innings: At New Hiroshima Citizens Stadium, Toshiro Miyazaki hit a two-run homer for the Yokohammers after five scoreless innings between Hiroshima’s Hiroki Tokoda and DeNA’s Katsuki Azuma. Ryosuke Kikuchi reached on a one-out single in the home half and scored on a Ryoma Nishikawa sac fly, and then tied it in the eighth with a squeeze bunt after Azuma walked Matt Davidson to lead off the inning.
J.B. Wendelken, who has said Hiroshima’s mound is a tricky one for him, surrendered an 11th-inning leadoff double to Shota Dobayashi before Shogo Akiyama won it with a two-out single.
Nik Turley also surrendered a leadoff double in the top of the inning, but stranded the go-ahead run to earn the win. The Carp will send Masato Morishita to what Wendelken calls their “double mound” Sunday, against Shota Imanaga, who could be pitching in his final game for DeNA.
Marines 8, Hawks 2: At Chiba Marine Stadium, Sasaki faced nine hitters, struck out four, and allowed one well-hit ball in three perfect innings. Lotte got a two-run lead when 37-year-old Takashi Ogino drilled a straight 1-0 fastball down the pipe for a homer, and Gregory Polanco crushed another fat one down the pipe, hitting it deep to right-center. Otherwise Stewart was sharp until he walked the three hitters who didn’t intentionally make an out by bunting in the third.
Southpaw Darwinzo Hernandez, with one Japan big league game under his belt in the summer, faced Polanco and got a tailor-made double play ball. Polanco would have been out by five feet at first on the relay had second baseman Masaki Mimori taken his time, but he rushed it. The throw short-hopped his first baseman, and two runs scored.
Yuki Yanagita hit a long two-run homer in the sixth to make it a 4-2 game, but the Marines dinked and dunked their way to three runs in the home half and put the game out of reach. Two scratch singles were followed by Hisanori Yasuda’s falling behind 0-2 by failing to bunt before he hit a 1-2 pitch to the gap to bring in Hiromi Oka. Polanco and Yasuda then scored on a little liner from Kyota Fujiwara. Oka doubled and scored in the eighth on a Yasuda single and that was the ballgame.
Sasaki, who suffered an oblique strain in July that caused him to miss six week, was working himself back into shape with a pair of three-inning starts in September, when he developed a fever that sidelined him again for nearly a month.
“I wanted to get back as soon as I could, but there was nothing to do but let it take its course,” he said after needing just 41 pitches to give Lotte a head start. “I felt good. I wasn’t nervous at all. The reception I got from the crowd while I was playing catch energized me, and carried me into the game, where the atmosphere was tremendous.”
“I wasn’t thinking about benchmarks that I might ordinarily expect to meet, but rather just trying to execute my pitches as well as I could.”
Sasaki’s velocity wasn’t 100 percent, but it’s never been 100 percent this time of year, while his command was well above average for him. His fastball was flattening out with arm-side run as it tends to do, but he threw some nasty sliders and his splitter was unhittable wherever he threw it.
Stewart threw some really good fastballs, along with his wicked curveball and that very good splitter he’s been throwing, but he and Sasaki both got squeezed a little in the strike zone, and Stewart had more trouble after close pitches went the other way.
