August 26th - Deja vu at the Dome

It had to happen again. Wada's stubborn and insistent practice of substituting his catcher and bringing on the inferior replacement ("because he works well with the closer") blew up in his face yet again. We had Tigers pushing and pressurizing Giants well. Messenger pitching well and Sugiuchi faltering. In the third Gomez put Tigers in the lead with a solo home run. Messenger held the lead. Then next innings Tigers added two more runs - a solo from Ryota Arai and a timely single from the bat of Yamato after Uemoto had successfully stolen second. Note - no stupid bunt and waste of an out here.
Tigers needed to survive the inevitable counter attack from the Giants which finally came in the bottom of the sixth. With a runner on Abe got hold of a pitch and put it into the stands for a two run home run. Things were close 3-2 but both Umeno and Messenger handled the pressure well. Of course under Wada's regime Messenger had to pitch the unnecessary extra innings (the eighth) because he hadn't reached 100 pitches in the seventh. It was a bit of a struggle but he made it. Then for Giants ninth we saw Oh take over with Tsuruoka behind the plate who temperamentally folds (well he was the BayStars regular catcher for years) under pressure. The start was inauspicious with Abe blasting a double to right. Abe was pinch run for by Suzuki. Oh let go a wild pitch and one which Tsuruoka should have stopped but failed miserably to do so. It's not the first time this has happened in this kind of situation. Suzuki reached third and with all the options open to them Murata hit the ball deep for the sacrifice fly and tied the scores. Oh was faltering and walked Yano who then took second on the second wild pitch of the innings. Once again Tsuruoka missed the take and once again this wasn't the first time. Using him at the end of games when he can't even take the ball is folly. With a runner on second and only one out it was Lopez who put Oh out of his misery and provided the single to centre to give the Giants a sayonara victory 4-3. Wada's approach - 'yes we really do want to lose these games and I will make all efforts to make sure we do'. On with the rest of the series. One hopes that this won't happen again.