Hayato Sakamoto reached a career milestone in a crucial game Sunday, while Roki Sasaki‘s progress in his return from an oblique injury took an ill turn, and – as he has been doing with every start recently – Yoshinobu Yamamoto recaptured the PL strikeout lead from Lotte’s Atsuki Taneichi, in his bid to lead the league for the third straight year.
Sunday’s games
Giants 6, Deniers 0: At Yokohama Stadium, Hayato Sakamoto had three hits and drove in multiple runs for the second straight day, while Shosei Togo (12-5) threw a six-hitter. Sakamoto’s first homer and his 21st of the season made him the 49th player to drive in 1,000 runs in Japanese pro baseball, with 1,001. He added a three-run shot to dead center in the ninth, and Togo stranded two in the ninth to finish his second shutout on 113 pitches.
Eagles 3, Fighters 1: At Miyagi Stadium, Rakuten overcame six scoreless innings of three-hit ball from Nippon Ham lefty Takayuki Kato, tying the game 1-1 on a seventh-inning Hideto Asamura RBI double before winning it on Hiroaki Shimauchi‘s sayonara walk-off two-run homer.
The Fighters managed just six base runners the whole game but took a one-run lead after Chusei Mannami singled off Kosei Soji with two outs in the third and scored on a Ryohei Hosokawa double.
Swallows 3, Carp 1: At new Hiroshima Citizens Stadium, Yasuhiro Ogawa (8-8) allowed a run on four hits and a walk over eight innings as Yakult came from a run down to slow Hiroshima’s progress toward locking up the second seed in the CL playoffs.
Allen Kuri (8-8) retired the first nine batters he faced, striking out six of them, singled to lead off Hiroshima’s fifth and score the opening run. He hit Yasutaka Shiomi to put the leadoff runner on in the fourth. A sacrifice, a Tetsuto Yamada triple, and a Munetaka Murakami double made it 2-1. After the first two Carp batters reached in the third, Ogawa retired 18 of the next 19 batters before Kazuto Taguchi worked a 1-2-3 ninth to earn his 33rd save, tying Hanshin’s Suguru Iwazaki for the league lead.
Hawks 7, Marines 6: At Chiba Marine Stadium, SoftBank was spared having to face Roki Sasaki, who was to make his third start since returning from injury, but was scratched after running a fever. Instead, the Hawks extended their BP into the first inning against rookie Rikuto Yokoyama (2-3), batting around in a six-hit, five-run inning.
Shuta Ishikawa, who said after his surprise no-hitter this year that he goes into every game thinking he’s going to get one but is used to going to Plan B in the first inning, did just that, giving up a walk and a double before Gregory Polanco reduced the deficit to four runs with a no-out infield single.
Trailing 6-1 in the second, speedster Koshiro Wada doubled and scored for the Marines. He hit a two-run fourth-inning homer, his second home run in 217 career plate appearances, and singled to contribute to another run in the sixth, when the Marines made it a 7-5 game.
Tigers 0, Dragons 0, 12 innings: At Nagoya Dome, the meaningless CL game of the day, Hiroto Saiki struck out seven while scattering five hits and three walks over 10 innings, and Yuya Yanagi matched him for eight scoreless frames.
Buffaloes 4, Lions 1: At Kyocera UFO Dome, in the PL’s meaningless game, Yoshinobu Yamamoto (15-6) struck out 10 over seven scoreless innings while allowing three singles and hitting two batters and lowering his ERA to 1.26. Yamamoto leads Lotte’s Atsuki Taneichi 158 strikeouts to 153.
Seibu southpaw Chihiro Sumida (9-9) kept pace for five innings before his former batterymate, Tomoya Mori broke the ice with a one-out solo homer in the sixth. After a walk and a hit batsman, Marwin Gonazalez’s 11th homer put this one on ice. David MacKinnon, who had two of the Lions’ four hits, singled in an eighth-inning run off Yuki Udagawa before Yoshihisa Hirano worked the ninth for his 27th save.
