Rain across Japan washed out the three games played outdoors Sunday, when all three late leads nearly vanished, with only one of three visitors holding on to its lead, and since the Giants were one of the victimized teams, Tatsunori Hara made his obligatory hard-to- decipher take on the subject.
Sunday’s games
Dragons 2, Giants 1: At Nagoya Stadium, for the third straight day, the Chunichi Dragons came from behind and seized and eighth-inning lead. Dragons right-hander Hiroto Takahashi gave up the first run on a home run by his Japan WBC teammate Takumi Oshiro.
Twenty-three-year-old iants starter Yuji Akahoshi, who a few weeks earlier had been ordered by manager Hara to recover his missing confidence, was victimized with two outs when Dragons catcher Takumi Kinoshita went after a low 1-2 splitter but somehow got under it and lofted it off the wall to plate Takaya Ishikawa with the tying run.
Hara went to his bullpen and got out of the inning, but 22-year-old Daisuke Naoe (0-1) took over in the eighth and couldn’t find the strike zone with eight of his nine pitches. Lefty Ryusei Oe, who at 24 is a bit more experienced, ran the count full on Yohei Oshima before striking him out. Rookie right-hander Taiki Kikuchi came in and walked the bases loaded before surrendering a sac fly to Ishikawa.
A 1-2-3 ninth by Raidel Martinez for his 10th save of the season and the 101st of his career, wrapped up the series sweep, leaving Hara with nothing to do but explain that his young pitchers need to learn from these painful lessons, and for once didn’t pretend like he knew the easy answer for their problems.
“In the end, it doesn’t matter what we say, it’s those guys who have to overcome this,” Hara said. “All they are extremely young pitchers, they must take what’s happening now and turn it into nourishment to grow on. At the same time, we have to nurture them.”
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