Exorcism of Eagles Complete; Softbank Impresses With Opening Weekend Sweep

So much for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles being a thorn in the SoftBank Hawks' side. Over the weekend the Hawks put the pedal to the metal and outlasted the Eagles in one game, then delivered a knockout blow in the next game.

Game 2 of the 3-game series was contested between Nagisa Arakaki and Rookie of the Year Masahiro "Ma-kun" Tanaka. This one was a nail-biter just like Opening Day, only this time it was the veteran utility infielder Mitsuru Honma who had some extra-inning heroics with a bases loaded sayonara RBI. Cristopher Nitkowski didn't have to wait as long as he did last year to pick up his 1st win of the season, giving 3 no-hit innings with 2 walks and 2 strikeouts.

The final game of the 3-game series was between Softbank "Golden Rookie" Ohba and Asai. Similar to the previous 2 games, Softbank played role of "cardiac kids" and made the Softbank faithful wait until the 8th inning before putting the game away. Ohba threw a complete game, 133-pitch shutout of the Eagles, giving up 8 hits, striking out 6 and, most importantly, walked nobody. For now, I take back my comments on being nervous about Ohba, given his poor open-sen performances.

Just a small correction, it was Jason Standridge who pitched game 2 against Ma-kun.

Ah, thank you very much. Since I can't watch games live, it's very difficult for me to find sources aside from the small blurbs on Japanball.com