Iwakuma Stifles Hawks, Eagles Win 3-1.

Hisashi Iwakuma is having a career year for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. The 27-year old righty is an astounding 13-3 with a 2.14 ERA (including his start against SoftBank), and he is approaching his career high in wins at 15 (twice with Kintetsu in 2003 and 2004). The SoftBank Hawks were unfortunate to run into him for the 3rd game of a 3-game weekend series at K-Stadium Miyagi.

To counter the white-hot Iwakuma, the Hawks sent one of their own aces to the mound, Tsuyoshi Wada. Wada was ultimately outdueled by Iwakuma, as Wada was touched up for 3 runs in 7 innings, while Iwakuma shut out the Hawks over 7 stellar innings.

The 2nd inning was the killer inning for Wada, as Jose Fernandez led off with a single. After Wada struck out Rick Short, Takeshi Yamazaki and Toshiya Nakashima doubled to score the first 2 runs of the game. Akihito Fujii then singled himself to drive in the 3rd run of the game and give the Eagles what proved to be a commanding 3-0 lead.

That was more than enough for Iwakuma, as he cruised. He only gave up 3 hits, walked 4 and struck out 5 over his 7 innings of work. Kanehisa Arime came in to try and preserve the win for Iwakuma, and his inning of work was clean. Tsuyoshi Kawagishi gave up the only run that SoftBank would get for the day. A double by Kokubo and a single by Restovich made it 3-1, but Kawagishi then bore down and slammed the door.