Kensuke Tanaka drove in a pair of runs and Yu Darvish earned a career-high 16th win Monday as the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters ended the Chiba Lotte Marines' four-game winning streak with a 2-1 win and climbed back into third place in the Pacific League.
Tanaka hit a solo homer in the sixth inning and broke a 1-1 tie in the eighth with a fielder's choice grounder to second at Sapporo Dome, making a winner of Darvish (16-4), who struck out 12 in a complete-game effort to help send the Marines into fourth place.
Darvish allowed five hits, including a seventh-inning RBI double to Tasuku Hashimoto, and a walk in a duel with Hiroyuki Kobayashi (5-12) as the Fighters got a boost in their bid for a playoff berth.