Pesky Buffaloes Continue to Frustrate Hawks

With a record of 8-6 against the SoftBank Hawks, the Orix Buffaloes are doing to the Hawks what the Rakuten Golden Eagles did last year: getting under the Hawks skin and beating them consistently.

Today marked the first start of Sho Iwasaki's career, but it was a rocky one, as one might expect. The Hawks #1 pick in the 2008 high school draft, Iwasaki only lasted 3 innings, giving up 3 runs on 7 hits and striking out 1. He was able to work out of a jam in the first inning, but after a clean 2nd inning, Iwasaki ran into trouble in the 3rd.

Four straight singles, from Moriyama, Sakaguchi, Masaki Abe, and Alex Cabrera drove in one run, and a double from Kitagawa drove in 2 more to stake the Buffaloes to a 3-1 lead, and Iwasaki left the game rather unceremoniously.

Orix's starter, 35-year old Ramon Ortiz, ran into trouble of his own. After the Hawks scratched a run across in the 1st, Ortiz walked Takaya after getting Restovich to ground out. After the walk, Honda singled, and then an unlikely source of power, Munenori Kawasaki, came up and drilled his first home run of the season to right to pole-vault SoftBank into the lead, 4-3.

The game settled down into a battle of the bullpens, which has not been SoftBank's strength this season. Lacking a true setup man or closer, the Hawks' back end of the bullpen is probably the weakest in the Pacific League, and it showed again today.

Despite a solid inning from the beleaguered Mise and Keisuke Kattoh giving 3 solid innings, it was all a question as to who would blow it today. This time it was Korean reliever Yao-Shun Yan who folded under pressure. In the 8th inning, Yan was called on to keep the door closed to an Orix comeback. He started the inning by walking Shimoyama, and after a sacrifice bunt by Oze, he hit pinch-hitter Hidaka.

Yan was taken out and in came rookie Yuki Kume. Kume exacerbated the problem by hitting pinch-hitter Makita. With the bases loaded and only one out, Sakaguchi came up looking to put Orix ahead. He didn't do that, but he managed to tie the game with a sacrifice fly. Masaki Abe then came up to try his hand at giving Orix the lead. He delivered a single that brought Hidaka around and put Orix in the lead, 5-4.

That's the way the game ended, as Shimizu, Kikuchihara, and Katoh slammed the door shut in the 8th and 9th, with Katoh notching his 22nd save of the season by striking out the side in order.

The Hawks, after a day off, stay at Yahoo! Dome and welcome the Chiba Lotte Marines to the dome for a weekend series. After this series, the Hawks close out their homestand against the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters as their last series before the All-Star Break.