Rakuten Eagles:Road to the Pennant

No Sekikawa or Yoshioka?!?! You should trade Maeda to get Okihara.

Okihara? What team is he on?

Anyway I made a HUGE mistake. Sekikawa ia my lead-off man NOT Satake. I go their numbers mixed up.

For Right Hand pitcher:

Sekikawa
Oshima
Isobe
Yamasaki
Takano
Lopez
Damon
Saito
Nakamura


Left Hand Pitching:

Sekikawa
Takano
Isobe
Yoshioka
Lopez
Damon
Oshima
Saito
Nakamura


I placed Yoshioka as a DH for Lefties since he bats right handed. If you look at my Right handed lineup I have three lefty batters to try to get on board quick. Sekikawa have above average speed, Ohsima have good contact, and Isobe to blast a HR or a double to bring themboth in. This team have little power wiith only Yoshioka,Yamasaki, and Isobe providing it. I have to play a lot of situational baseball to win games ie: Sacrifice fly and bunts, etc.

Okihara plays for Hanshin. He's on the farm team.

Okay, So I tried your advice Bigman and put a trade up for Maeda for Okihara. The Tigers did not except but two days after they brought me an offer. They wanted Tamaki for Okihara. I refused because Tamaki is the best righty I have in the pen. I'll try something down the line.

Anyway, The journey for the new team have gone underway. My first game ended up with a tie going 12 innings with a 6-6 score against the Marines. Isobe hit a solo HR in the 1st inning and a double in the 4th to drive in 2 runs. Takano hit a single to drive in a run and Damon hit two sacrifice flys. Iwakuma went to 7 innings giving up 3 runs and 6 strikeouts.

I beat the Marines the next day 4-3. Kaneda stayed strong for 6 1/2 innings and gave up 1 run and 4 strikeouts. The bullpen almost lost it when Kawamoto gave up a 3 run shot to Benny.

I took 2 out of 3 from the Hawks in the next series. I got the Hawks in a great slump because Tony Batista wasn't hitting, Ohmura wasn't hitting, Johjima wasn't hitting, nor was Zuleta. But that animal Matsunaka hit 2HR and a double in the last game to stop the sweep. Kawajiri got hammered in the last game, giving 13 hits and 9 runs. And the troubles are starting to creep on me because I only had 5 hits and 2 runs in the last game of the series.


Just finished a game against the Lions and Iwakuma pitched brilliantly for a complete game. (I'm nasty when it comes to pitching) Although he did give 2 solo HRs to Alex Cabrera (He's another monster I hate. I had him on a 3-2 count and tried to break a slow curve ball low since he was on fouling off my fastballs and he juiced one over the ballpark) Other than Alex I ran through the Lions striking out 14 batters and giving up 2 runs and 4 hits.

Lost to the Lions in the second matchup and got blown away to a score of 8-1. Takamura didn't have it and gave up 6 runs in the first inning. My only run came from Lopez bloop single to bring in Ohshima. Lion's Ace Matsuzaka blew fastball right by me with ease. I had the volume up with the dobly surround option on and the sound of the fastball hitting the mitt by Matsuzaka was crazy. He almost threw a perfect game on me but fortunately he got hit by a line drive and left the game where I scored my one run.


Oh and here's my settings:

CPU-Hard
Ball Speed- Medium Speed
Ball tracking curosr-Off
Normal Batting Cursor

So far the month of April have gone O.K. I'm 4 games under the Hawks.

Standings:

Hawks 18-11
Fighters 14-11
Marines 14-12
Eagles 12-13
Buffaloes 13-15
Lions 10-19


Lions have fallen greatly after the first week of the season. The Fighters are my number one rival since they have swept me twice in 2 series. I traded starter Takamura for Kimura from the Carps. His numbers are not great but he's a decent second baseman and he have speed,which I need in the top of the line-up. Also, I'm hoping that he could put up numbers he put up from 2003. I went strictly to a
5-man rotation after the trade.


Stats:

Isobe .382 7HR 20RBI
Damon .375 2HR 7RBI
Nakamura .275 2HR 13RBI
Sekikawa .344 0HR 6RBI 1SB
Kimura .221 2HR 9RBI 4SB
Yoshioka .211 3HR 10RBI
Takano .265 2HR 13RBI 1SB
Lopez .253 1HR 11RBI


Kimura is doing good so far stealing 3 bases and hitting a homer since joining. Yoshioka really need to start hitting for average more. He fantastic with Lefties but is downright horrible with righties. The biggest disappointment is Yamasaki. He is hitting .177 with 1HR,I sent him down immediately. Isobe is still the #1 producer on the team. Its a shame he have to deal with this but oh well.


current Lineup

Kimura (2nd)
Sekikawa (center)
Takano (Left)
Isobe (right)
Yoshioka (1st)
Damon (DH)
Lopez (3rd)
Saito (SS)
Nakamura (Catcher)


For the pitching, Kaneda have been absolutely brillant. He is currently 5-0 with a 2.45 ERA leading the league. Iwakuma is also doing great with a ERA of 2.60 and going 3-0. Other than those two and my closer Yoshida, the rest are doing bad. My bullpen is good for the most part but they give up leads like crazy. Hodges have been a disgrace with a ERA of 9.84 and Kawajiri is 1-2 with a 6.25 ERA. I'm thinking of sending down Hodges and putting Rath as a starter.

That's pretty good for the Eagles, it's must be frustating at times I imagine(extremely frustating).

Yet again my bullpen lost the game. In the first game in May, I was leading 5-4 after Damon Minor hit a three run homer to right field off of Matsuzaka. I put Tamaki in (my best righty) and he blew it in the 8th giving up 3 runs giving the Lions a 7-5 win. I was prepared for this when I started so I'm not too angry.

Now I'm 5 games back since the Hawks win again, bad way to start off the new month.

Sorry to anyone that is following this but my game got got scratched and my memory card became got corrupted. So all my stats are gone and now I have to start all over again.