Solid effort from Hawks yields win against Lotte

Thoroughly in a state of win one, lose one, the Hawks at least have been somewhat successful in winning series. As a team, winning two out of every three games will yield a .667 winning percentage.

SoftBank continued on this trend by pulling out a 5-3 win over first-place Lotte despite a shaky 8th from starter Toshiya Sugiuchi. Already tiring at that point, Sugiuchi (W, 5-1) ended up throwing 7 and 2/3 innings while also throwing 133 pitches. All three runs he gave up came in the Marines 8th on a three-run blast from Tadahito Iguchi (1), this following a walk to Tomoya Satozaki and an infield single by Tsuyoshi Nishioka. Falkenborg would stop the bleeding in the inning, and Mahara worked the 9th and struck out two and walked one for the save (7).

However, it wasn't enough as the Hawks bats did their job early in the game against Yuta Ohmine, who shut out the boys form Fukuoka in his last start against them. In the very first inning, the Hawks made sure that Ohmine (L, 2-1) didn't get a chance to extend his scoreless streak. Honda hit a one-out triple to right, and Ortiz followed with a timely two-base knock to put the Hawks up quickly, 1-0.

The Hawks gave Sugiuchi more to work with in the 3rd when Hiroki Kokubo did what he does best and crushed a solo shot (4) to put the Hawks up 2-0.

In the top half of the 6th, the Hawks continued to pour it on, as they added three more off Ohmine. Ortiz started the inning with a walk, and then three straight singles from Kokubo, Tamura, and Lee Bum-ho (RBI single) gave the Hawks a 3-0 lead. With the bases still loaded, Matsuda croaked a 2-run double to end SoftBank's scoring for the day and give Sugiuchi a comfortable lead.

The Hawks will go right back to work tomorrow, hoping to string together multiple wins. Shinsuke Ogura (0-0, 0.00) will take on Yoshihisa Naruse (4-1, 1.96).