Tag Archives: Roki Sasaki

NPB news: May 28, 2024

The 20th season of Interleague play started Tuesday, with the Pacific League holding a 1,253-1,122-71 record for a .526 winning percentage. The current format is for each team to play six three-game series, one against each of the other league’s teams, playing home and away in alternate years. I have some interleague notes below, as well as some news regarding Roki Sasaki, and a new Buffalo.

Roki Sasaki was deactivated Tuesday, due to his inability to recover sufficiently from upper-body fatigue following Friday’s start against the SoftBank Hawks, when he overcame a stressful 35-pitch first inning to go seven in a 3-1 win. Sasaki is currently 4-2 with a 2.18 ERA in eight games.

The Orix Buffaloes have signed 31-year-old right-hander Luis Perdomo, making him the second former Marine on the roster, after Luis Castillo. Perdomo posted 41 holds and went 1-3 in 53 games last year with a 2.13 ERA. He struck out 41 batters in 50-2/3 innings while walking 15 and allowing one home run.

Tuesday’s games:

Carp 2, Buffaloes 1: At New Hiroshima Citizens Stadium, Anderson Espinoza (4-3) allowed two runs on two walks and three hits over seven innings but came out on the short end when both of his first-inning walks scored on a Shota Suekane single, while Hiroki Tokoda (6-2), stranded seven runners over seven innings to earn the win after Sotaro Shimauchi retired the heart of the order 1-2-3 in the eighth and Ryoji Kuribayashi did the same in the ninth for his 15th save and Hiroshima’s fourth straight win. The Buffaloes lost their third straight.

Ryoma Nishikawa returned to Hiroshima and Yuma Tongu returned to Orix’s lineup for the first time in 13 games. Singles by Tomoya Mori and former Carp Nishikawa set up Tongu’s sacrifice fly that halved Hiroshima’s lead.

Continue reading NPB news: May 28, 2024

NPB news: May 26, 2024

The Seibu Lions are giving manager Kazuo Matsui the boot without saying they are giving him the boot, and a power hitter talks about this year’s soggy dead ball.

Due to work scheduling conflicts, I saw very, very little baseball this weekend. On Friday, I caught the start of Roki Sasaki‘s game when it looked like he’d be lucky to go five innings, caught the last the three innings of Shosei Togo‘s no-hit shutout, and the final inning of the Swallows’ extra-inning win against Raidel Martinez.

Let’s start with the game stuff

The No-No

I don’t really know how many no-hitters there have been in Japan, since only shutouts are counted, but of those the first two from the start of league play in 1936 were thrown by the Giants’ Eiji Sawamura against the Tigers, the first, in 1936 at Koshien, the second at the Giants’ first home ground on the Tokyo Bayside, Susaki Stadium, in 1937.

Continue reading NPB news: May 26, 2024