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.

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