September 23rd - Well, what do you expect?

Wada in his infinite wisdom gave Tsuruoka another chance to blow a game and his catcher took it with open arms. Tsuruoka was paired with Iwata and you might think that the pairing did quite well with 4 hits and 2 walks over eight innings until you see the pitch count 139. That is a bit much against opposition that clearly couldn't string anything together. Still it was wasteful but it worked. Tigers finally took the lead in this game (they also had trouble stringing hits together) in the eighth and one feels that Iwata going eight innings was another case of my pitcher matches your pitcher which Japanese managers so often indulge in. Oh took over with a 1-0 lead in the ninth but with Tsuruoka still as catcher. An error put a runner on and then some uninspired calling (going inside instead of outside to Blanco) resulted in the second pitch being hit over the well for a sayonara home run 2-1 BayStars. It had been really uninspired work by Tigers catcher and truly uninspired team selection by Wada. Tigers of course need to win these games if they are to take second and this one was an unnecessary loss.