Leather … or not …
Discussion in the Japanese Baseball Daily forum
About
This is a site about Pro Yakyu (Japanese Baseball), not about who the next player to go over to MLB is. It's a community of Pro Yakyu fans who have come together to share their knowledge and opinions with the world. It's a place to follow teams and individuals playing baseball in Japan (and Asia), and to learn about Japanese (and Asian) culture through baseball.
It is my sincere hope that once you learn a bit about what we're about here that you will join the community of contributors.
Michael Westbay
(aka westbaystars)
Founder
Copyright (c) 1995-2024 JapaneseBaseball.com.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Some rights reserved.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Some rights reserved.
Fighters take advantage of break, top Marines
The Lotte Marines’ Carlos Rosa might have more lead in his glove than gold.
The righty tried to field a bouncer by Yang Zhong-shou of the Nippon Ham Fighters in the 10th inning on Wednesday, but the ball bounced off his glove and into left field for an RBI that knocked in the winning run in a 5-4 win at The Q.
The contact play was on and the infield was in with Sho Nakata -- who opened the frame with a legitimate double -- at third. Rosa (0-1) jumped to try and glove Yang’s chopper, but the ball gained momentum after banging off the heel of his glove and escaped the grasp of a scrambling Keisuke Hayakawa at short, trickling into short left.
Yang zipped into second with a double and that was all the scoring as fourth-year righty Toshiyuki Yanuki picked up his first pro save with a perfect 10th to close it out.
Micah Hoffpauir [friend of JBW] clubbed a three-run homer to put the Fighters in the lead 3-2 in the sixth. Lotte tied the score when Takashi Ogino smacked his second pro homer off Naoki Miyanishi in the seventh. Nippon Ham went back in front on Eiichi Koyano’s sac fly in the ninth. Hisashi Takeda (4-3), however, blew the save before getting the final out and picking up the win.
The Fighters won for the second straight night and moved 1.5 games ahead of the Marines, who have gone 1-5-1 since July 25.
HAWKS 3, EAGLES 0
Tadashi Settsu (10-5) fired his first shutout of the season [he threw one last year on June 6], and SoftBank broke through for three runs in the top of the ninth to down slumping host Rakuten [loser of six straight].
Manabu Mima went the first eight innings, but got the hook after throwing 122 pitches. Darrell Rasner (1-2) came on in the ninth and was roughed up for three runs on three hits, reserve Toru Hosokawa doubling in two to break the tie.
Settsu allowed three hits and three walks, while fanning nine to earn double digits in wins in his second straight year as a starter.
TIGERS 3, SWALLOWS 2
Takashi Toritani and Takahiro Arai each knocked in first-inning runs, and Matt Murton’s third-inning RBI single proved to be the difference as Hanshin knocked off Yakult a second straight night at Koshien Stadium.
Yoshitomo Kubo (3-4) made the runs stand up, limiting the Swallows to a pair of a pair of fifth-inning runs, scattering five hits and a hit batter over seven innings.
CARP 12, BAYSTARS 0
Shota Dobayashi blasted a three-run homer [his 11th] to cap a four-run first inning, Jun Hirose had three hits and two RBIs and Kenta Kura added three hits and a pair of RBIs to back seven scoreless innings by Kenta Maeda (11-3) as Hiroshima bombed host Yokohama.
DRAGONS 2, GIANTS 2
Pinch-hitter Yoshitomo Tani drilled an RBI double off the wall in the left-field corner to tie the score in the bottom of the ninth off Chunichi closer Hitoki Iwase, who blew the save but hung on to get the final out in a time-limit deadlock at Tokyo Dome.