Japanese Baseball

The top buzzwords in Japan in 2015, as chosen through the annual U-Can Shingo Ryukogo Taisho (U-Can New Words and Buzzwords Awards), were co-winners bakugai and toripuru suri. The former refers to extreme shopping sprees carried out by Chinese tourists. The latter, Triple 3, to ...

Former flame-thrower Daisuke Matsuzaka showed Sunday that execution and location can be a winning combination as he pitched the Chunichi Dragons to a 6-1 victory over the Hanshin Tigers. The 37-year-old former major leaguer located his fastball and cutter well and mixed in some nasty ...

Tomoyuki Sugano may be the best pitcher in the world who isn't in the major leagues, but the 28-year-old Yomiuri Giants star intends to rectify that situation. Last season's winner of the Eiji Sawamura Award as Japan's most impressive starting pitcher, the soft-spoken right-hander has ...

Shinsaburo Tawata bounced back from his worst start of the season with a six-hit shutout as the Pacific League-leading Seibu Lions beat the Orix Buffaloes 7-0 on Saturday. Coming off his first loss of the season, Tawata (7-1) struck out five and walked one but ...

Tomoyuki Sugano surrendered the lead on a slider. So it was only fitting the Yomiuri Giants ace used one to get it back. Sugano allowed a game-tying home run in the top of the fifth inning, then took matters into his own hands with a ...

Motohiro Shima delivered a game-tying, eighth-inning RBI double and Takero Okajima doubled in the winning run in the ninth as the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles rallied to beat the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks 4-3 on Thursday. Okajima, who walked and scored the tying run in the ...

Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks infielder Seiichi Uchikawa has been deactivated due to right knee and left ankle trouble, the Pacific League club announced Thursday. Uchikawa, who reached 2,000 career hits last Wednesday in the Hawks' 3-0 win against the Seibu Lions, batted a ball into his ...

The third time proved to be the charm for rookie Katsuki Azuma, who threw his first shutout on Wednesday in the Yokohama BayStars' 5-0 win over the Hanshin Tigers. The BayStars' top draft pick last autumn, Azuma (3-2) produced bad swings and lots of soft ...

Chunichi Dragons rookie Raidel Martinez earned his first NPB win after early homers and late runs solidified a 10-4 victory against the Hiroshima Carp on Tuesday. Martinez (1-1) retired the first 11 of 13 Carp batters before the right-hander gave up four runs at Nagoya ...

On the night Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks captain Seiichi Uchikawa reached the 2,000-hit milestone, one of the the first items on public broadcaster NHK's 9 p.m. national news program was a breathless retelling of the first NPB home run hit by Kotaro Kiyomiya, the Hokkaido ...

The Seibu Lions put up five runs in the first two innings Sunday against left-hander Edgar Olmos as the Pacific League leaders snapped a four-game losing streak with a 6-0 win over the Chiba Lotte Marines. Olmos (0-2), who went 1-1 in his brief major ...

Takahiro Norimoto pitched a one-hitter in his first shutout of the season in the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles' 2-0 win over the Orix Buffaloes on Saturday. Four-time PL strikeout king Norimoto (3-3) fanned nine in his seventh start of the season. He was tagged with ...