Tag Archives: Elier Hernandez

NPB news: April 2, 2025

Nobody’s perfect in Japanese pro baseball, not the Lotte Marines dropped their home opener Wednesday following their weekend sweep of the SoftBank Hawks, and not the Yomiuri Giants’ Hayato Sakamoto. Perhaps the greatest shortstop Japan has produced, Sakamoto, we learned Wednesday from reports, has been caught in a rundown with tax officials over some of his deduction claims.

Wednesday’s games

Buffaloes 3, Marines 2: At Chiba Marine Stadium, Masahiro Nishino made up for a costly error with a tie-breaking two-run homer after the two starters, Orix’s Ryuhei Sotani and Lotte’s Yuji Nishino pitched six entertaining innings apiece. The Marines opened the scoring in the third on a one-out walk, Nishino’s throwing error and a beautiful safety squeeze from Akito Takabe. Kotaro Kuribayashi’s two-out RBI infield single tied it in the fourth.

Nishino homered in the top of the seventh, Neftali Soto singled in a run in the home half, when Orix reliever Seiryu Kotajima left the bases loaded. Andres Machado allowed a leadoff single in the ninth but struck out Soto to end it.

Continue reading NPB news: April 2, 2025

NPB news: Aug. 13, 2024

In the past week, it’s begun looking like NPB has now retired the remaining substandard baseballs that had been produced for the 2024 season and has been replacing them with balls originally intended to be put in play next year. Mind you, that’s not a data-based conclusion but an observation, so it might be wrong.

Nevertheless, the Pacific League saw three complete-game victories Tuesday, two of them shutouts, while two DeNA pitchers combined for another in Hiroshima.

In other news, the Giants’ Elier Hernandez is out, and I’ll get to that after today’s games. On Monday, Akinori Iwamura announced that this would be his last year as manager of the independent BC League’s Fukushima Red Hopes to take responsibility for the club’s poor results. Iwamura founded the club along with a women’s team, and has served as its chairman.  

Tuesday’s games

Hawks 6, Lions 1: At the domed stadium formerly known as “Prince,” Seibu scored first, but Livan Moinelo put a stop to that nonsense while Kensuke Kondo went 3-for-3 with two homers, two walks, three runs and three RBIs. Moinelo allowed two hits and a walk over the distance while striking out six.

Seibu scratched out a first-inning run on a leadoff walk, a Sosuke Genda single and a Takayoshi Yamamura sacrifice fly. Moinelo, however, retired 20 straight hitters after Genda’s single. The loss was Seibu’s eighth straight. Former Lion Hotaka Yamakawa went 2-for-5 but failed to homer for the fifth straight game.

Continue reading NPB news: Aug. 13, 2024