Tag Archives: Stefen Romero

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NPB 2020 8-28 GAMES AND NEWS

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Norimoto outduels Neal

Takahiro Norimoto allowed a run over six innings to outduel Zach Neal in the Rakuten Eagles’ 2-1 win over the Seibu Lions on Friday at Sendai’s Rakuten Seimei Park Miyagi.

Norimoto (5-3) struck out five, while walking two and allowing five hits. The 29-year-old right-hander’s stuff has continued to improve incrementally from start to start. His splitter, a problem pitch at the start of the start of the season, was dynamite in concert with a good fastball.

Both he and Neal (2-4) located well and generated routine outs, but with Neal lacking Norimoto’s good swing-and-miss pitches, it was a surprise to see the Lions score first.

Corey Spangenberg, who’d been unable to touch Norimoto’s fastball and splitter his first time up, stayed on a high 0-2 fastball and lined it for a one-out sixth-inning double. With two outs, Fumikazu Kimura brought Spangenberg home from third with a double into the left-field corner.

The Eagles took the lead, however, in the bottom of the inning against Neal. Hiroaki Shimauchi barreled a 1-2 two-seam fastball up in the zone for a leadoff single. Stefen Romero walked, and Takero Okajima miss-hit a hanging slider but got enough of it to ground it past first for an RBI single. Neal jammed the next hitter but

“I am hitting well right now,” Okajima said. “Nori is pitching well so it feels like we can win. Now it’s on to the weekend games.”

In contrast to his first several starts, when Norimoto was having trouble both locating the splitter and getting the release he needed to make it tumble, it was working to perfection against the Lions and was unhittable by anyone gearing up for his heat.

“I was able to put guys away with the forkball, so I used it a lot,” Norimoto said. “I believe in the work I’ve been putting in, I’m confident that I come in to games well prepared.

When he came out after six, the Lions went from the frying pan into the fire, as Sung Chia-hao treated them to an even better fastball, a diving slider and a good change in a 1-2-3 seventh. Former Lion and Padre Kazuhisa Makita worked around a single in the eighth before Alan Busenitz overpowered the Lions in the ninth to earn his seventh save.

Takeda returns as Hawks crush Kaneko

Shota Takeda (1-0) worked seven innings in his first game of the season for the SoftBank Hawks, who crushed former Sawamura Award winner Chihiro Kaneko (1-2) for five runs in the first inning in a 9-1 win at Fukuoka’s PayPay Dome.

Sho Nakata singled in Taishi Ota in the first inning, but that was the Fighters’ high-water mark as Ryoya Kurihara highlighted the Hawks’ first with a three-run homer. He also walked twice and hit a solo homer, his 11th. Hawks superstart Yuki Yanagita, despite a stiff neck and legs belted his 19th homer in the second, yet another lunar launch to the remote reaches of the Casa de PePe’s right-field stands.

Takeda struck out six while walking one and allowing five hits.

Martin bombs Buffaloes

Leonys Martin drove in four runs on a pair of homers, both well back into the upper deck at Osaka’s Kyocera Dome in the Lotte Marines’ 5-3 win over the Orix Buffaloes.

Ayumu Ishikawa (5-2) gave up three runs over six innings, while Buffaloes starter Sachiya Yamasaki (2-3) served up both of Martin’s bombs and all five Marines runs over six innings.

Frank Herrmann struck out two in a 1-2-3 eighth for the Marines before Naoya Masuda picked up his 18th save in a perfect ninth.

Abe doubles down as Dragons beat Giants

Toshiki Abe had two big doubles, one in Chunichi’s three-run sixth and another that drove in two and broke a 3-3 tie in the seventh as the Dragons came from behind to beat the Yomiuri Giants 5-3 at Tokyo Dome.

Raidel Martinez, the sixth Dragons pitcher, worked a scoreless ninth to earn his ninth save.

Uemoto lifts Carp over Tigers

Takashi Uemoto drove in the winning run in the bottom of the ninth inning as the Hiroshima Carp overcame a blown save to beat the Hanshin Tigers 4-3 at Hiroshima’s Mazda Stadium.

Uemoto, whose older brother Hiroki was manning second base for the Tigers, came up with two on and one out after singles by Ryuhei Matsuyama and Shogo Sakakura. As Japanese teams do, the Tigers pulled the outfield in to keep the runner on second from scoring on a single, and drove one over the left fielder for a “single.”

Sakakura’s two-run homer in the second gave Hiroshima rookie Masato Morishita a 3-0 lead against Yuki Nishi, the Tigers’ Opening Day starter. But Nishi shut the door after that and Yusuke Oyama powered Hanshin’s comeback, singling and scoring in the fifth and homering in the seventh. He then singled in the ninth off closer Geronimo Franzua (1-1) following Jerry Sands’ leadoff single to help set up the tying run.

Peoples wins 2nd straight

First-year import Michael Peoples (2-1) threw six scoreless innings to win his second-straight start and the DeNA BayStars held off the Yakult Swallows 6-2 at Yokohama Stadium.

The BayStars’ Neftali Soto had two hits, scored a run and drove in one, while Keita Sano’s three-run seventh-inning homer put the game away after the Swallows score in the seventh to make it a 2-1 game.

Swallows rookie Daiki Yoshida (1-4) allowed two runs over six innings to take the loss.

Active roster moves 8/28/2020

Deactivated players can be re-activated from 9/7

Central League

Activated

CarpC32Yuta Shirahama

Dectivated

CarpC31Yoshiyuki Ishihara

Pacific League

Activated

HawksP18Shota Takeda
MarinesP27Daiki Yamamoto
FightersP47Kenya Suzuki
BuffaloesIF5Masahiro Nishino

Dectivated

LionsP45Keisuke Honda
FightersP28Ryusei Kawano
BuffaloesP22Ryota Muranishi

Starting pitchers for Aug. 29, 2020

Pacific League

Eagles vs Lions: Rakuten Seimei Park Miyagi 6 pm, 5 am EDT

Takahiro Shiomi (3-4, 4.10) vs Sean Nolin (-)

Buffaloes vs Marines: Kyocera Dome 2 pm, 1 am EDT

Chang Yi (1-1, 2.70) vs Kota Futaki (1-2, 6.00)

Hawks vs Fighters: PayPay Dome 2 pm, 1 am EDT

Matt Moore (0-1, 4.50) vs Kohei Arihara (3-5, 3.93)

Central League

Giants vs Dragons: Tokyo Dome 2 pm, 1 am EDT

Nobutaka Imamura (1-0, 6.23) vs Yariel Rodriguez (2-0, 1.40)

BayStars vs Swallows: Yokohama Stadium 6 pm, 5 am EDT

Shinichi Onuki (5-2, 1.81) vs Matt Koch (0-1, 13.50)

Carp vs Tigers: Mazda Stadium 6 pm, 5 am EDT

Daichi Osera (5-2, 3.00) vs Shintaro Fujinami (1-4, 3.78)

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NPB 2020 8-2 GAMES AND NEWS

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Umetsu, Yamanaka tangle in epic pitchers’ duel

Kodai Umetsu threw 10 scoreless innings for the Chunichi Dragons on Sunday but had to settle for a tie after Swallows submarine right-hander Hirofumi Yamanaka worked eight innings and Yakult’s bullpen supplied more in their 10-inning tie at Nagoya Dome.

Precise with his lively 93 mph fastball and splitter, while mixing in a big slider and an occasional cutter, the 23-year-old Umetsu missed bats or got called strikes on the outside corner en route to nine strike outs. He gave up five hits, one for a double, and walked two.

The 34-year-old Yamanaka, making his season debut, quickly locked in his command after issuing a first-inning walk to Yohei Oshima, who crushed one mistake just foul. By varying his 61-mph slider with a 71-mph screwball and a 76-mph fastball, he didn’t miss bats but he generated a mountain of weak contact.

The game teetered in the balance with two outs in the ninth, when Norichika Aoki put a good swing on a forkball that hung up slightly on the outside corner and drove it to left for a double and his second hit. The Dragons opted to fill first base with slugger Munetaka Murakami. Umetsu hung a splitter up a little to diminutive left-handed hitter Kotaro Yamasaki, whose liner ended up in the glove of second baseman Toshiki Abe for the third out.

Umetsu looked drained when he went out for the 10th inning, but maintained his concentration, throwing some good fastballs that proved too much for the reserve-filled Swallows lineup.

Rookie right-hander Noboru Shimizu overcame a poor first pitch in the ninth to Nobumasa Fukuda, who drilled it for an opposite-field double, while closer Taishi Ishiyama worked a 1-2-3 10th.

Carp youngster cuts Giants down to size

Lanky 21-year-old right-hander Atsushi Endo (2-1) allowed two runs on five hits over the distance for the Hiroshima Carp in a 9-2 win over the Yomiuri Giants at Tokyo Dome.

Seiya Suzuki hit a two-run first-inning homer for the Carp off Toshiki Sakurai (2-2) in the first. Ryoma Nishikawa singled in another run in the second before Sakurai extricated himself from a no-out, bases-loaded situation, and Endo singled in a run in Hiroshima’s two-run third.

Nishikawa put the game on ice in the seventh with a three-run home run, the third homer in four games for the Carp leadoff man.

Oyama gets it done as Tigers pitchers scrape by

Yusuke Oyama’s one-out, two-run single proved to be the big hit on a night when big hits were hard to come by, lifting the Hanshin Tigers to a 3-1 win over the DeNA BayStars at Koshien Stadium.

Tigers lefty Yuta Iwasada surrendered a home run on the game’s first pitch to Takayuki Kajitani for the first of his three hits. No. 2 hitter Toshiro Miyazaki reached base three times, but the three, four, and five spots in the BayStars order went 0-for-12.

With the BayStars still leading 1-0 in the top sixth, the visitors loaded the bases on three walks from excitable right-hander Yusuke Baba to bring up Kajitani, who had yet to make an out. Baba popped him up on a first-pitch fastball on the hands.

BayStars right-hander Kentaro Taira had allowed two hits and hit a batter through the first five innings. But Kojj Chikamoto yanked a 1-0 slider away to right for a leadoff single. Veteran Yoshio Itoi lashed a hanging slider to right to put runners on the corners and pinch-runner Kairi Shimada stole second.

Taira worked away to Oyama, who chased 1-1 slider out of the zone but it off the end of the bat. The ball dropped abruptly in the outfield, giving right fielder Neftali Soto no chance to collect it before Shimada scored the go-ahead run.

Martin, Kakunaka rescue Marines

Leonys Martin and Katsuya Kakunaka each homered in the late innings as the Lotte Marines overcame a big day from Stefen Romero in a 7-6 come-from-behind win over the Lotte Marines at Chiba’s Zozo Marine Stadium.

With two outs and runners on the corners and Romero at the plate, lefty Toshiya Nakamura bounced a pitch, ran to cover home plate to find the runner on third had come too far down the line. In his eagerness to get the final out, Nakamura rushed his throw and it skipped away, allowing the first run to score.

Two pitches later, Romero tagged a pitch that missed up and away and drove it over the fence in center for his 10th home run and a 3-0 Eagles lead. Martin singled and scored the tying run in Lotte’s two-run sixth.

Veteran Takashi Toritani, making a rare start, nearly gave Lotte the lead, but a leaping grab by former Golden Glove-winning second baseman Kazuya Fujita ended the inning.

Romero restored Rakuten’s lead with a two-run homer in the top of the seventh, but the Eagles’ bullpen couldn’t hold it.

Kakunaka led off the home half with a home run off former Lion and Padre Kazuhisa Makita to make it a one-run game. Former Marines captain Daichi Suzuki, however, singled in a run in the top of the eighth before Martin sparked a three-run eighth with a leadoff home run.

Kakunaka tied it with an RBI single and Yudai Fujioka’s sac fly put the Marines ahead for good. Closer Naoya Masuda worked around a one-out single, striking out pinch-hitter Jabari Blash to end it and earn his 11th save.

Active roster moves 8/2/2020

Deactivated players can be re-activated from 8/12

Central League

Activated

CarpP46Mikiya Takahashi
SwallowsP68Hirofumi Yamanaka

Dectivated

CarpP28Hiroki Tokoda

Pacific League

Activated

EaglesP31Yuya Fukui
MarinesP41Kakeru Narita

Dectivated

LionsP40Ichiro Tamura
MarinesP16Atsuki Taneichi