Hawks Return Shutout Favor, Blank Eagles 6-0

If anything, the complete-game shutout yesterday at the hands of Ma-kun and the Rakuten Eagles should have made the Hawks mad. Nobody likes to get shut out, and the Hawks were also looking to put the first blemish on Rakuten's record.

They did just that today. The only foreign holdover from 2008, DJ Houlton, was tasked with putting forth some quality innings, something the Hawks have had some trouble getting since Opening Day. Seemingly every other day, the Hawks get a good start, and the trend continued, although it was not pretty from Houlton.

In seven innings, Houlton gave up only one hit, to pinch hitter Tadashi Ishimine, which was coincidentally Ishimine's first career hit as well. However, he walked a whopping 5 batters, all five in the first four innings. However, Houlton made good by striking out seven batters, and also retiring the last nine batters he faced after giving up the lone hit.

Yasushi Kamiuchi and Takahiro Mahara (seeing his first action of the season) both gave up a hit, but also struck out one batter each to preserve the shutout.

On the other side, Hideki Asai was knocked around. In fact, he did not get out of the first inning. Asai got off to a good start by retiring both Honda and Kawasaki to start the game, but after Asai walked Hidenori Tanoue, the wheels came flying off.

Matsunaka singled, then Kokubo followed with a double to score Tanoue. Then things got really ugly for the Eagles starter. He walked three straight batters (Hasegawa, Kidokoro, and Takaya) to force in the third run of the game. Asai got out of it by striking out the 9th man of the inning, Satoru Morimoto, but the damage was done. He did come out to face Honda for the beginning of the 2nd, but Asai surrendered his fifth and final walk of the day. Hisashi Kitani was called on to clean up the mess. Honda was doubled home by Kawasaki, which closed the book on the Eagles starter.

Asai's final line was 1 inning, giving up 4 runs on only 2 hits, walking 5 and striking out only one. Kitani was good in relief, giving 4 and 1/3 strong innings, giving up 1 run on 3 hits and striking out 5, including striking out the side in the 5th. Marcus Gwynn gave 2 good innings to stem the tide, but Kenta Satake gave up 2 more runs in his only inning of work. He gave up back-to-back doubles to Matsunaka and Kokubo, then gave up a single to Nakanishi. Those two runs ended the scoring.

For the Hawks batters, Matsunaka led the way by going 3-for-4 with 2 singles, a double, and a walk. Catcher Takaya went 2-for-3 with 2 singles and a walk.

For the Eagles batters, they only contributed 3 hits total to the cause, and a concern would be that super-gaijin Rick Short is only hitting .188 to this point in the season. Also, Takeshi Yamazaki is only hitting .167.

The Hawks and Eagles play the rubber game of their three-game set tomorrow, when the Eagles send right-hander Satoshi Nagai to the mound. The Hawks will counter with young lefty junkballer Kenji Ohtonari.