The Orix Buffaloes became the third team this season to cancel games due to COVID-19, scratching their weekday series against the Rakuten Eagles, and making it nine games this season, matching 2021’s total.

The DeNA BayStars played for the first time since last Wednesday but had to call up a raft of players to do it.

The Fighters made news Tuesday by announcing they were going to a five-man rotation, which makes a hell of a lot of sense, starting with lefty Takayuki Kato working on five-days rest.