Hayato Sakamoto rallied his team with a grand slam and captain Shinnosuke Abe broke the game open with a three-run drive in the late going as the Yomiuri Giants pounded the Hiroshima Carp 8-1 to open a three-game series on Friday.
Dennis Houlton (3-0) kept the Carp bats off-balance, pitching one-run ball over eight sharp innings. The right-hander earned his third straight win since the start of the season, yielding six hits and walking just one batter at Mazda Stadium.
Sakamoto went 4-for-5 and launched a 1-1 pitch from lefty Yuichi Hisamoto (0-1) to overturn a 1-0 deficit for a 4-1 lead in the third. Takayuki Terauchi added an RBI single in the fifth and Abe put the frosting on the cake with his pinch-hit shot off reliever Tsuyoshi Kikuchihara in the eighth.