The Nippon Ham home run streak ends, Kenta Maeda‘s search for his first Japan comeback win goes on, and Hiroto Saiki tied the Central League strikeout record with 16, although the big story might just be how he exited the game, and the curious lack of thunder this has attracted, a sign that Japanese baseball might be growing the hell up.

In pursuit of records

Japanese baseball has a curious relationship with records, and has a long history of risking injuries and meaningful wins so that players can strive for records.

With a chance to establish a CL record, Saiki was yanked after throwing 105 pitches through eight innings. Of the five pitchers in Japanese pro ball history to fan 16 through eight innings, Saiki is just the second to leave the game at that point.

Last June 6, Livan Moinelo came out for a pinch-hitter in the top of the ninth with SoftBank leading 2-0 in the ninth at Jingu Stadium after throwing 117 pitches before Roberto Osuna blew the save in the home half of a 3-2 loss. The record for strikeouts in a game is 19, set by Orix’s Koji Noda in 1995 and tied by Roki Sasaki in his 2022 perfect game.

At the time, SoftBank manager Hiroki Kokubo said Moinelo had looked like he was giving it the last drop of his energy in the eighth.

You know Japan is calming the hell down when this kind of outrageous managing – pulling a starter when he was in position to set a record without having already thrown 300 pitches–isn’t called out by every former player with access to a pen.