Dropped from Fourth

Well, with the lack of runs that the BayStars are putting on the board, it was only enevitable that they would lose their 4th place position to the Carp eventually. And that time came on Friday night when they were shutout yet again, this time 12-0 by the Eagles.

Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles' starter, Isaka Ryohei, in his first ichi-gun appearance of the season, scattered 4 hits over 6 innings of work for his first win of the season. Striking out just one batter, he had the BayStars putting the ball in play. It's just that pretty much everything went right to somebody. Rakuten's middle relief, Yamamura Hiroki and Inoue Yusuke, shut the 'Stars down in order in the 7th and 8th. Then, Aoyama Koji finished the 9th maintaining the shutout despite a 1-out triple by Uchikawa Seiichi, striking out Murata Shuichi and Kuwahara Yoshiyuki to end it.

Despite the lopsidedness of the game, the Yokohama fans were on their feet, cheering with all their heart down to the final out. It was moving to see so much hope for a single run. But that hope may have made the crash down to reality harder when neither Murata nor Kuwahara were able to plate Uchikawa.

In the meantime in Hiroshima, the Hiroshima Toyo Carp defeated the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks by a score of 5-4. Former BayStar Ishii Takuro drove in a pair of runs in the 4-run Carp 4th to take the lead and eventually the game. That victory put the Carp in 4th place by themselves, a half game over Yokohama (but still 11 games out of first).

Things were looking brighter on Saturday afternoon, though. Miura Daisuke, while not exactly throwing a commanding performance, got the outs when he needed them, allowing just 3 runs in the 4th inning. The BayStars managed to scrape together 4 runs on 12 hits off of Rakuten ace Iwakuma Hisashi. Ushida Shigeki allowed a triple to Hijirisawa Ryo to lead off the 7th inning in relief of Miura, but got a pair of infield ground outs and struck out Nakamura Norihiro to get out of that jam. Ushida allowed a 1-out single to Kusano Daisuke in the 8th, but pinch runner Uchimura Kensuke was caught stealing and Ushida faced just one over the minimum for his two innings of work.

Then we get to the 9th, with what passes for our closer again this year, Yamaguchi Shun, taking the mound. Watanabe Naoto singles to center to lead off the Eagles' half of the 9th. Then Randy Ruiz came up to pinch hit for relief pitcher Koyama Shinichiro. And there was no doubt about the ball that this "heavy weight class" slugger (the press compares him to Muhammad Ali) hit. The ball sailed right over the left field stands and into the park beyond Yokohama Stadium, bouncing off the top of a okonomiyaki vender's tent, and landing at the base of a brassiere vender in the Saturday afternoon park bazaar. Ruiz has his first home run since arrive in Japan, and there goes Miura's 4th win of the season.

Yamaguchi then settles down and retires the next three Eagles in order, but the damage has been done. Despite a drag bunt single by Ishikawa Takehiro with two down in the bottom of the 9th, the BayStars can't get anything going again.

On the bright side, we're still just a half game out of 4th, as the Carp went on to lose to the Hawks. But what's most frustrating is watching Yokohama struggle to move runners around and just scrape out a few runs while the opposition makes scoring look so easy. Rakuten's 3-run 4th inning all happened after two outs. A walk, single, walk, then 3-run double did the damage. Yokohama out hit Rakuten 13 to 9, yet were only able to score 4 runs to their 5.

Argh!