SoftBank Back in Action vs. Rakuten

After a long layoff and a series win against the Orix Buffaloes last weekend, the SoftBank Hawks get back to work tonight against the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles at Yahoo! Dome. This is a short 2-game series, and tonight the Hawks send recently-recalled Shota Ohba (3-5, 5.28) to the mound against Rakuten ace Hisashi Iwakuma (14-3, 2.14)

Ohba and Iwakuma are a tale of two pitchers. Iwakuma is having a career year. After getting some well-deserved rest, but surprisingly not making the Japanese Olympic Team, Iwakuma makes his first start in more than a week.

Ohba, on the other hand, has been toiling at ni-gun for a good while now. His last start was on July 12th against Nippon Ham and he once again had trouble. However, Ohba has been very good against Rakuten. In 2 starts, he is 1-0 with a 1.20 ERA, but in four of his last 5 starts, he has failed to get 5 innings of work in. The one other start was, incidentally, against Rakuten.

It seems I made a mistake, Ohba is not pitching against Rakuten today, it's Ohtonari instead.