TOKYO – Takayuki Kishi pitched one-run ball in his second complete game of the season, keeping batters off balance with a nasty breaking ball in the Seibu Lions’ 3-1 win over the Yomiuri Giants on the opening day of interleague play Wednesday.
Kishi (6-1) allowed just four hits, struck out nine and walked none in a 127-pitch outing at Tokyo Dome. He retired the last 21 batters he faced.
Dee Brown hit a tiebreaking homer leading off the fifth and Hiroyuki Nakajima belted another shot to right, both off Dicky Gonzalez (3-4), leading off the seventh.
The Giants’ winning streak ended at five games.
Fighters 4, Tigers 2
At Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, Atsunori Inaba homered and drove in three runs as Hokkaido Nippon Ham beat Hanshin to win its fourth in a row.
Inaba opened the scoring with an RBI single off Yasutomo Kubo (3-4) in the fourth and went deep with a two-run blast in the ninth.
Bobby Keppel (5-1) threw his first complete game in Japan, scattering eight hits, striking out four and walking two.
Marines 2, BayStars 1
At Yokohama Stadium, Saburo Omura hit a tiebreaking homer in the fourth inning as Chiba Lotte prevailed to send the home team to its third straight loss.
Shoitsu Omatsu put the Marines on the scoreboard with his leadoff blast in the second.
Omura connected off former teammate Naoyuki Shimizu (4-3) with two outs in the fourth for the lead. Shunsuke Watanabe (3-3) yielded one run in six innings to win his first start since April 3 and Hiroyuki Kobayashi got his eighth save.
Dragons 5, Hawks 1
At Nagoya Dome, Kazuki Yoshimi limited the damage to one run over seven innings and got plenty of run support from his Chunichi teammates to send Fukuoka Softbank to successive losses for the first time in nearly a month.
Masahiko Morino opened the scoring with a two-out RBI double in the third. Kazuhiro Wada hit a leadoff homer — his Central League-leading 13th — in the fourth and Motonobu Tanishige added a run-scoring double the same inning.
Yoshimi (6-1) gave up four hits and had five strikeouts with no walks. D.J. Houlton (4-4) took the loss.
Buffaloes 2, Swallows 1 (10)
At Jingu Stadium, Tomotaka Sakaguchi delivered a run-scoring triple in the top of the 10th inning, helping lift Orix past Tokyo Yakult.
Hisao Arakane reached on an infield single with one out in the 10th and moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by Fumihiro Suzuki, setting up Sakaguchi’s triple to deep center off Takehiko Oshimoto (1-3).
Mamoru Kishida (3-4) won in relief. Jon Leicester pitched a 1-2-3 10th for his seventh save.
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