Hawks Reverting to Old Habits, Lose to Dragons Late 5-4

When it seemed that the Hawks were finally going to break out of their funk of win one, lose one baseball, something happens to keep them from doing just that. On back-to-back days, the bullpen let them down.

For the second straight day, DJ Houlton failed to keep the opposition off the board in the 8th inning. A four-run meltdown gave the Tigers the win yesterday, and today it was a single run that did in the Hawks.

Aging Dragon Kazuyoshi Tatsunami led off the 8th with a double to left, and then was pinch-run for by Sawai. A groundout and a sacrifice got Sawai to 3rd, and then 2007 Japan Series MVP Norihiro Nakamura scored Sawai and served Houlton the 2nd loss for him in as many games. Yoshimi recorded the win and ace closer Hitoki Iwase earned the save to put Softbank back to under .500 on the season.

With Shota Ohba and Rick Guttormson at ni-gun, Nagisa Arakaki was called on to make the start against notoriously wild Kenichi Nakata. Arakaki wiggled in and out of trouble, at least until the 5th inning. His final line was 4 and 1/3 innings, giving up 4 earned runs on 10 hits, walking 2 and striking out 5. Nakata was much more effective over 6 innings, giving up 3 runs on 7 hits, with 3 walks and 5 strikeouts.

The defending Japan Series Champions drew first blood in their half of the 1st inning. Ibata walked, and after a groundout, Tyrone Woods singled to bring home Ibata to make it 1-0 Chunichi.

The Hawks struck back with 2 runs of their own in the third inning. A single by the red-hot Matsunaka, a walk to Kokubo, and a double by Shibahara brought in Matsunaka and Kokubo, as they were off with the pitch. The score at that point was 2-1, Hawks.

Inoue and Hidenori both rapped out singles to begin the fourth inning. After Oda and pitcher Nakata struck out swinging, Araki singled in Inoue to complete Chunichi's station-to-station offensive initiative that inning. The very next inning, the Dragons struck again for 2 more runs. Arakaki gave up three straight hits to Nakamura (single), Woods (double), and Kazuhiro Wada (single) to score one run. After another strikeout, Arakaki was chased via another single by Hidenori to score the 2nd run of the Chunichi 5th. Yanase came in to stop the bleeding, and he was instantly successful, getting a double play from Oda to end the inning.

With the score 4-2 entering the Hawks Lucky 7, Softbank got a run back when super pinch-hitter Honma clubbed a home run to right to make the score 4-3. In the 8th, the Hawks tied the score on a dramatic home run from Kokubo to tie the score at 4 before Houlton again lost it in the 8th.