First Win for Obana and Fujie

The Yokohama BayStars finally managed to put it all together and defeat the Hanshin Tigers at Kyocera Dome in the third game of the season opening series. The victory marks Obana-kantoku's first as manager, but also Yokohama starter Fujie's, now in his second year.

Hitoshi Fujie came out of the Nomo Baseball Club, joining the Yokohama BayStars in 2009. He only appeared in 9 games last season, starting 7 and finishing with no wins and 4 losses and a 6.51 ERA. He allowed just 1 run on 3 hits and walked 1. The run came on Sakurai's second home run of the season, a solo shot in the 3rd inning. After Fujie allowed a single to Murton to lead off the 6th, followed by a sacrifice bunt, Takayama came in to replace him, getting Toritani looking and Kanemoto popping out to left. The BayStars held onto their precious 1-run lead (2-1 at the time - it should have been 3-1, but Castillo's home run to right was called a double, even with the umpires viewing the video replay).

The three BayStar runs came from the usual culprits: Murata, Sledge, and Yoshimura. With two down in the third inning, Kinjoh singled to left off of Hanshin starter Shimoyanagi. Murata then doubled to right, but Sakurai missed the cutoff man with his throw in, allowing Kinjoh, who had paused at third, to come home. (No RBI scored for Murata, though this was his third double in three games to result in a run.) Sledge came through with a single to center that scored Murata, and the BayStars took a 2-0 lead. (Sakurai tried to make up for the bad throw with a solo home run in the bottom of the third, making it a one-run ball game.)

The BayStars added an insurance run in the top of the 7th when Kinjoh hit a 1-out double to the left-center gap, Murata was walked intentionally, and Sledge drew an unintentional walk to load the bases. Yoshimura, who had been moved up to the #6 spot in the batting order, as he has a good history against Shimoyanagi, followed with a sacrifice fly to right off of Kubota (the run charged to Egusa, who started off the inning on the mound) to right, making the score 3-1.

Graig Brazell hit a 2-out solo home run in the bottom of the seventh to make it a 1-run ball game again, 3-2. And that was it as far as the scoring went.

On the one hand I'm a little worried by this opening series. That was 4 home runs over 3 games. Fortunately, only Sakurai's home run in game 1 had a runner on base. So 4 home runs accounted for only 5 runs allowed. If we've still got a case of ippatsu-byo, at least it hasn't been too serious. And putting together a dose of 9 doubles on offense in the series has been close to negating the effects of those home run spasms.

But Yokohama really shut down the heart of the Hanshin order. Number 3, 4, and 5 (Toritani, Kanemoto, and Arai) combined for a 4 for 33 outing (.121) and 3 RBIs while striking out 6 times. Johjima did the most damage, going 5 for 13 with 5 RBIs, including that fateful sayonara home run on Saturday. Keeping Johjima silent at the plate Sunday was a big contributor to the win. (And, no, they didn't walk him. Johjima struck out twice and grounded out twice.)

OK. So we lost 2 out of 3. But they were really close games, and there was a lot of positive coming from them. Overall, I think the team performed well, and that there are many more wins coming in our future.