May 12th Iwata v Miura - Miura dominant...almost

Miura seemed dead and buried as a Tiger killer last year but has bounced back most effectively this year. Tigers batters seem to find him unhittable which is surprising as they have seen enough of him over the years. I suppose you could attribute this regression to the Wada approach to management. It was a good thing they had Miura though as BayStars produced only two runs from nine hits and two walks. Hardly a nice rate of exchange. Once again our beloved catcher was inept and was replaced by Okazaki in the eighth. Scores

          1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E
Tigers    0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 2 0
BayStars  0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 X 2 9 0

Starting lineups

Tigers
1. Toritani (Short)
2. Hirano (Second)
3. Murton (Right)
4. Kanemoto (Left)
5. Arai (Third)
6. Brazell (First)
7. Asai (Centre)
8. Fujii (Catcher)
9. Iwata (PItcher)

BayStars
1. Aranami (Centre)
2. Salazar (Second)
3. Tsutsugoh (Third)
4. Ramirez (Left)
5. Nakamura (First)
6. Yoshimura (Right)
7. Kajitani (Short)
8. Kurobane (Catcher)
9. Miura (Pitcher)

Miura's start belied his later pitching - he was all over the place and walked Toritani in five pitches. Hirano grounded out to Miura but Toritani made second. Then Murton grounded out to third - no movement there. Kanemoto walked in four but Arai after working the count full hit back to Miura but not past him to end the Tigers first. Aranami led off with a single. Salazar grounded out to Hirano moving Aranami round to second. Then Tsutsugoh grounded out to the same person and moved Aranami round to third. A good chance for Ramirez but he flew out to centre hitting his first inviting pitch to end the innings. After his wobbly first Miura settled down and was dominant in Tigers second with all the batters falling easily. The first two batters in BayStars second grounded out but then Kajitani singled to centre. He stole second but this chance went begging as Kurobane struck out to end the innings. Tigers third and the batters went down in order. Miura grounded out to start BayStars third and then Aranami tried a bunt hit along the third baseline. Fujii fielded but was a bit slow and failed to get the throw away, It was poor fielding as Brazell was in line of sight and a throw may well have resulted in an out - the umpires weren't exactly aware. Salazar grounded out to short which took Aranami to second but then Tsutsugoh struck out to end the innings.

Tigers fourth was quiet with Kanemoto completely misjudging a pitch and striking out looking. He was that fooled he that he checked his swing. In BayStars fourth Ramirez led off with a single to left. Nakamura hit into a double play but Yoshimura singled to centre. Kajitani seemed to be handling the pitching well but then decided to ground out to first to end the innings. Tigers fifth and everyone flew out. BayStars fifth was also quiet but once again with Fujii too many pitches were being used. Tigers sixth was quiet as well. Salazar though led off BayStars sixth with a nice single to left. Tsutsugoh bunted him to second and this was the first stupid bunt of the day - a waste of time. Ramirez flew out and there then followed one of those mound conferences which do more harm then good. Nakamura was deliberately walked to set up runners on first and second which all made the bunt earlier even more stupid and pointless. However, the call was terrible and Yoshimura hit his first pitch nicely into right centre. This brought home Salazar and surprisingly Nakamura who raced round the bases to give the BayStars a 2-0 lead with a runner on second. Kajitani hit his first pitch to left but Yoshimura held up on third rather than chance Kanemoto's throw - runners on first and third. Finally, Kurobane grounded out to short to end a rather successful innings for BayStars.

Tigers seventh was of course quiet. BayStars seventh saw Salazar single again this time with two out. Tsutsugoh struck out swinging and the BayStars advantage remained at two. Tigers eighth saw the pinch hitters. Fujii was replaced by Lin who flew out to right and Iwata by Sekimoto who also flew out to right. Miura was looking at a no hitter - he had only walked two and his pitch count was very low. Okazaki replaced Fujii as catcher - not an improvement calling to Fukuhara. Fukuhara rejected a lot of Okazaki's calls - at one instance 5 calls were rejected. He got the first two outs but then walked Yoshimura. However, he then got Kajitani to fly out to centre to end the innings. Tigers ninth and would Miura make the first no hitter of his career. As the next batter was due to be Fukuhara, Wada sent Hiyama to the mound. Hiyama was excellent and drove the ball to right for Tigers first hit of the afternoon. He was pinch run for by Shunsuke. Toritani hit a grounder to third which forced out Shunsuke but left Toritani on first. Then Hirano hit very nicely to left to set up runners on first and third. Murton hit straight back to Miura who threw to second for the double play. Silly fool - he should have thrown to home to stop the runner 2-1 BayStars, runner on first. The final batter was Kanemoto who failed miserably to do anything and flew out to third to end the game. BayStars victory.

Miura had pitched superbly and completely flummoxed the Tigers batters. This makes his problems in the ninth even more surprising as one would have thought that the no hitter would have been his. The only thing that Tigers could take away from this game was that they hadn't been shut out but they hadn't been able to figure out Miura at all.

The biggest impression I had of Miura's pitching was that he had the Tigers popping out a lot. It didn't seem like too many were getting the meat of the bat on the ball at all.

I'm starting to get concerned about the increase in strike outs by Tsutsugoh. But that's another story.

16 of the 31 batters he faced were flyouts so your impression is probably correct. He only had one strike out the whole game which does suggest that they were able to hit but not to time correctly.