Tigers: The Missing Short Ball

- Certainly the 10-1 defeat to Seibu was due to rare Okada mismanagement of the match ...

Or perhaps due to the fact that Seibu, and Matsuzaka in particular, played very, very well.

Just a thought.

Okada tried to pitch Shimoyanagi into the seventh rather than switching to JFK with the score at 1-1. This is always a risky strategy as Shimoyanagi normally pitches 5 or 6 innings. Furthermore, Matsuzaka was able to hit a home run - a sure indicator of poor Tigers' pitching.

It is not necessarily the failure to score but the margin of victory that illustrates the mistake. Matsuzaka may have been able to win the match with JFK pitching and he may not. By making this decision Okada handed the match to Seibu.

One Tiger is the key to the Tigers' "small ball" game: Akahoshi.

Akahoshi sprained his left ankle on Thursday against the Fighters at Sapporo Dome while making a spectacular catch going back in center and running into the fense. He's been out since Friday's 10-1 loss to Seibu.

Of course, this only covers the weekend series. Before that, perhaps there was a growing reliance on Spencer to hit a miracle pinch hit home run when necessary?

I was thinking of a more general malaise. The inability to score RBIs with a series of hits. This goes back to the first series against Seibu. Watching the game it was interesting to see how many players were trying to hit long balls and flying out. The most representative game was their 3-2 loss to Nippon Ham where the Tigers wasted four bases loaded situations and left 17 runners on base. They seem to have lost the ability to string together a series of hits game after game.

The Tigers missed a trick or two. But certainly Imaoka and Hamanaka were totally out of sorts with runner on base.

I think it's better to change Hamanaka back to 6th or 7th on the batting order. And I can't beleive Kanemoto's double play against Matsuzaka in the 1st inning. The game would have changed with that.

Anyway, Matsuzaka hitting home run is not a deal, but using Shimonayagi in 7th was definitely something. Maybe Okada-kantoku thought he was as good as againt Marines where he pitched 8 solid innings with only 3 hits, yet took the loss. But this was different. He was allowing all sort of hits, it was only a matter of time for the Lions, and they waited for it till 7th inning.

Right now the only saving face for the Tigers is Sheets. He is the only one delivering at crucial times and trust worthy. Kanemoto is improving in consistency.

Yesterday, also, there were so many errors by Egusa. That guy pitches so well except for his own defensive mistakes.

On the good side of things, Kataoka seems to getting into the right place with the bat. Also Spencer deserves more in the lineup, so as Lin.

Lin could have been used as the center fielder.

Hmmm, the Tigers have definitely lost many opportunities in this inter-league to be on top, and all of them are self-inflicted loses.

Now a 4-way tie for the top spot is really interesting.

What's "short ball" exactly?

"Small ball" - I put the wrong word in my header to this thread. My apologies for the confusion.

Continuing the malaise - the series loss against Rakuten. Tigers left a total of 44 runners on base over the three games. If anything is indicative of serious problems this is. Furthermore, they actually drew the inter-league games 3-3 with Rakuten. Nothing seems to be working at the moment and really the second half of the inter-league games can only be described as embarrassing.

3-7 over their last 10. With so many stranded runners, time to mix up the batting order?

What are your thoughts on a new order?

I would like to see more use of Lin as a replacement for Hamanaka and less use of Imaoka.