On a night when Shota Imanaga, Kohei Arihara, Yoshinobu Yamamoto were all lights out, we had a bunch of near shutouts, but the only complete game blanking came somewhere else, from Allen Kuri.

Friday’s games

Buffaloes 5, Fighters 1: At Kitahiroshima Taxpayers Burden Field, Orix scored five early runs off lefty Takayuki Kato (5-6), and the defense helped ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto (7-3) keep the Fighters scoreless until there were two outs in the eighth.

Marwin Gonzalez doubled to open the third, and with two outs Keita Nakagawa singled to open the scoring. Koji Oshiro followed with his first home run of the season, and Yamamoto was off to the races. Another two-out single by Nakagawa in the third made it 5-0.

Yamamoto struck out seven without a walk, and might have given up a seventh-inning run without some big defense from Yuma Mune at third and Yutaro Sugimoto in left. Daiki Asama started his belated season debut 0-for-3 before his two-out triple in the eighth prevented a shutout.