Five more teams failed to score Sunday in Japanese baseball, although to be fair, three of those teams did not get a full nine innings worth of chances as two games were shortened by rain. Still, entering Sunday’s games, home runs in the Central League were down 47 percent from the previous three years, while the PL blast rate was down by 35%%. Still six teams each played six games, and teams failed to score 18 percent of the time, scored just one run 9.7 percent of the time, and two runs 15.3 percent of the time.

There was no blog on Saturday, because I was rushing to get home and left it in a word file at the office with no way to retrieve it, so I’ll share a couple of goodies I picked up yesterday before the Lions-Eagles game.

But first the games…

Sunday’s games

Fighters 5, Marines 0: At Kitahiroshima Taxpayers Burden Field, Fighters complete sweep of Marines with back-to-back complete game shutouts. After being flummoxed by hard-throwing Koki Kitayama on Saturday, soft-tosser Takayuki Kato scattered nine hits and a walk, and Chusei Mannami and Ariel Martinez hit back-to-back homers in a five-run fourth off Atsuki Taneichi.

Continue reading NPB news: April 21, 2024 →