Tigers Line-Up

Okada may be trying to be like Valentine in swapping batters around, but his changes are difficult to understand. He started out playing Kataoka and Sekimoto at third and switching them with left handed and right handed pitchers. For some reason Sekimoto stopped being used at third and switches with Fujimoto at second. He then tried Kamisaka and Sheets at third and Spencer at first. Kamisaka was a disaster and Spencer wasn't good. Shuta is also making an appearance at second and third.

At the moment his only genuine third baseman is Kataoka, though his last outing was a disaster as well. I rather suspect that he is trying to make the side more flexible and adaptable - they have rather been under-performing recently, particularly in the second half of the inter-league.

... as they did in 2003 with Imaoka leading off and Akahoshi batting second.

Well hopefully if Imaoka ever comes back things can get consistent. I can understand some moves have been made for defensive reasons, but I really don't understand switching Akahoshi out of the leadoff spot, as he hits for average and has great speed. Moving Sheets to fifth last night made some sense. Although Sheets still leads the team in average (I believe), he does hit into a lot of rally-killing double plays, so it might be good to move him down for a bit. The pitching is solid, but they will need to start scoring more runs to catch Chunichi.

Let's not forget the best thing Akahoshi does as a leadoff batter, and that's see many pitches and foul a lot of balls into the stands.

It doesn't really matter what position Akahoshi plays at the moment. The Tigers' problem is not getting the RBIs. Yesterday they outclassed the Swallows in all departments except RBIs. Result - the Swallows won the match on a 14-5 hit count to the Tigers. This is where Imaoka was so valuable - he scored runs and that is what the Tigers need from their batters.