PLPO: S2G1 - Darvish takes down the Hawks 3-1

Wow.

It's really hard to remember that Yu Darvish turned 20 barely two months ago.

Tonight he went the distance, pitching a complete game against the Hawks, giving up one run, striking out 11.

He did have a shaky start, and the Hawks put a run on the board in the first inning when Kawasaki and Ohmura led off the game by singling, Shibahara bunted them ahead, and Matsunaka hit a sac fly to left that scored Kawasaki.

But that was the only run they'd score in the evening as Darvish handled them pretty well along the rest of the way. I think only one batter got to third base for the rest of the evening, and that was only because Inamine beat out the throw at first on what should have been a double play in the sixth.

I was really worried that Hillman might have kept him out there too long - 138 pitches - but hey, it worked, and there's a good chance he'll want his bullpen fresh for tomorrow when they have to face Kazumi Saitoh (not sure that's definite, but that's what the announcers were saying after the game, Yagi vs. Saitoh).

The Fighters put their runs ahead in the bottom of the third inning. Hichori Morimoto singled, and was bunted over by Kensuke Tanaka. Ogasawara walked (which was a theme for the evening, he was walked three times, once intentionally), and Fernando Seguignol hit a single to left, scoring Hichori. (You should have seen the look on Seguignol's face, he was ecstatic, waving his hands with the biggest grin ever.) Inaba popped out to short right field, and then Shinjo singled to right, scoring Ogasawara, and Shinjo looked even goofier and happier. Macias flew out after that, too, but it was 2-1 Fighters.

It'd stay at 2-1 until the bottom of the eighth. Yanase, the rookie who pitched pretty well against the Lions the other day, wasn't pitching so well here. He walked Iiyama, and then Tsuruoka ripped one into the right field corner for a single, but moving Iiyama to third. Fujioka took over, but allowed a single to Makoto Kaneko, who hit a low blooper into shallow center, scoring Iiyama.

So yeah, 3-1 Fighters.

Sugiuchi came off the mound after only three innings, but I didn't hear why.

Can some Hawks fan enlighten me as to why Shibahara's batting third?

BTW, I ended up doing a spontaneous liveblog of the game over at Marinerds (with my running somewhat-incoherent commentary on the game and an ongoing game chat in the blog comments), and was thinking I'd end up doing that again tomorrow night, though it'd be neat if we could get a chat room set up here for some of the post-season games. I have no idea whether it's a major pain for you to put them up or not, Westbay-san, but just wanted to let you know that it's likely a bunch of us would use it if you did!

Also, it turns out that the Fighters' broadcast of these games does go outside Japan, though as Ken D. and I noticed, the 768k feed is horrendously choppy. The 100k feed is tiny, but at least the sound is good and you can catch the action on the replays if you don't see it the first time.