March 13: Starter Shintaro Fujinami didn’t look like himself. Or should I say, he looked a little too much like his 2017 self. Control was lacking, pace was slow, and it all fell apart in the fourth inning. (Prior to that, he played with fire in the first three innings.) In the 4th, it was a combination of bad control (a hit batsman, his second of the game, plus a walk) and bad fielding (two Tsuyoshi Nishioka errors) that saw him leave the game after allowing four runs and recording just one out.
His successor on the mound is once again showing that he is a solid farm pitcher, and nothing more. Hiroya Shimamoto gave up four hits and a walk, recording just one out himself (his catcher threw out a runner to end the inning). After four, it’s Swallows 9.
And in the fifth, they added one more off Ryoma Matsuda. Swallows 10, Tigers just one hit.
Looked like we might pull off the miracle comeback that would have surpassed last year’s historical game… in the bottom of the sixth, we put up three runs (Wilin Rosario bases loaded walk + Kento Itohara double) without recording an out. And with two runners in scoring position, we managed just one more run that inning on a groundout. Swallows 10, Tigers 4
And then in the seventh, our boys showed some more promise. Four straight one-out singles put another run on the board (RBI #3 for Itohara) and stuffed the bases. But alas, that was all she wrote.
Diego Moreno, Kyuji Fujikawa and Marcos Mateo kept the Swallows off the bases the rest of the way, other than a couple of walks from the latter two gents.
Final Score: Yakult 10, Hanshin 5
March 14: Talk about a lame way to be scored on. Atsushi Nohmi walked the leadoff guy in the third inning, then an error on a hit-and-run put two men on base. A sac bunt and a sac fly later, and the scoreless tie is no more. Another unearned run today after six yesterday. SIGH. T 0-1 S
Nohmi went two more clean innings and Tsuyoshi Ishizaki relieved him and struck out the side in the sixth. He also threw the seventh, got into a bases loaded jam thanks to another infielder error, but escaped without allowing a run.
Meanwhile, our hitters stayed in their preseason funk, with just two singles through five innings. One was proceeded by a bunt that left the guy stranded on second instead of first. The other was negated by a double play.
Fortunately our boys tied up the game in the bottom of the sixth, this time using the sacrifice bunt to produce the skinny run. Itohara drove in the run again. T 1-1 S
Akifumi Takahashi kind of blew it in the 8th, though. Leadoff hit, then a walk, then an RBI hit and a sacrifice fly. T 1-3 S
In the bottom half, Ryutaro Umeno picked up his second hit of the game, which helped set up a great chance for Itohara. The good news is that he brought home a run, his fifth RBI of the short series. The bad news is that it cost us a precious out. And that was the extent of the comeback.