The ball was flying, particularly in Chiba, where Gregory Polanco, hit three of the six homers there, while Leandro Cedeno, and Matt Davidson, and Yuhei Nakamura all hit big ones. There was some bad injury news, and a lot of good pitching and some sweet breath-taking defense.
Sunday’s games
Buffaloes 2, Hawks 1, 10 innings: At Fukuoka Dome, Orix’s Hiroya Miyagi and SoftBank’s Nao Higashihama each allowed an early run over eight innings. Higashihama struck out nine, walked none and allowed three hits, retiring 19 straight after Yuma Mune tied the game with his second home run in the second.
Kensuke Kondo put SoftBank in front in the first, when he doubled with two outs and scored on a Yuki Yanagita single, but after the Hawks loaded the bases in the eighth on a single, an intentional walk and a hit batsman, he was hopping mad when a low-and-away 3-1 pitch he took for a called strike and then swung and missed 3-2 to leave the bags juiced.
Shota Abe (1-2) worked a 1-2-3 eighth, and Leandro Cedeno blasted a leadoff homer, his fourth, to open the 10th against Yuki Matsumoto (0-3), and Yoshihisa Hirano took out the bottom of the order for his 15th save and consigning the Hawks to their eighth straight loss.
