Tag Archives: Darwinzon Hernandez

NPB news: July 21, 2024

Nippon Professional Baseball played its final games Sunday before this week’s all-star break, with Tomoyuki Sugano picking more low hanging fruit with some help from a new teammate. Livan Moinelo was solid again, Tyler Austin hit another big homer on a night when no matter how many DeNA hit, it wouldn’t be enough.

Nippon Ham came from behind twice thanks to an outstanding effort from its bullpen, while Orix and Hiroshima got crushed in Kansai.

Sunday’s games:

Giants 4, Dragons 1:  At Nagoya Dome, Tomoyuki Sugano allowed a run over six innings and new Giant Gakuto Wakabayashi hit a two-run home run to lead Yomiuri past Chunichi.  Yomiuri, looking for its first Central League pennant in four years, bounced back from a 1-0 loss on Friday to take the final two games of the series.

The 34-year-old Sugano, a two-time winner of the Eiji Sawamura Award as Japanese pro baseball’s most impressive starting pitcher, improved to 8-2. He allowed five hits while striking out five and walking none.

Wakabayashi made it 2-0 Giants in the fifth inning with his first home run since being traded from the Pacific League’s Seibu Lions on June 25.

With a four-run lead in the sixth, Sugano surrendered a home run to Sho Nakata, who was released by Yomiuri in December, two and a half years after he was discarded by Nippon Ham.

Six of Sugano’s wins have come against the worst two CL teams, three each against the fifth-place Dragons and last-place Swallows. His other two came against title-contender Hiroshima, and the team with Japan’s worst record, the Seibu Lions.

Continue reading NPB news: July 21, 2024

NPB news: June 2, 2024

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.

Continue reading NPB news: June 2, 2024