Buffaloes rise to occasion to claim interleague crown
The Orix Buffaloes made the most of interleague play. The Kansai club limped into the interleague slate three games under .500 and in fifth place in the Pacific League standings. What followed was a 12-5-1 run against the Central League from May 25 to June ...
Roki Sasaki makes highly anticipated NPB debut with Marines
The "monster" finally made landfall on May 16. Pitcher Roki Sasaki was Japan's most-hyped rookie in some time when the Chiba Lotte Marines won his rights in the 2019 draft. He didn’t pitch on the top team in 2020, but that didn’t slow the swell ...
Jerry Sands homers in eighth to lift Tigers over Dragons in pitchers' duel
With two outs in the eighth, the right-handed-hitting Sands homered off right-handed side-armer Katsuki Matayoshi (0-1).
Veteran Yoshio Itoi broke a 1-1 fifth inning tie with his second home run of the season, leading the Central League-leading Hanshin Tigers to a 3-2 come-from-behind win over the Yokohama DeNA BayStars on Sunday. Trailing 1-0 after 11 of the first 12 batters made ...
Yudai Ono threw eight innings of two-hit, one-run ball and earned his first win of the season Tuesday as the Chunichi Dragons came back to beat the Central League-leading Hanshin Tigers 2-1. Takuya Kinoshita broke the tie with one out in the bottom of the ...
NPB prepares to go back behind closed doors
Last week began with a crowd of 17,712 at Tokyo Dome for a showdown between the Hanshin Tigers and Yomiuri Giants, the top two teams in the Central League. There were 15,345 fans present at the Big Egg on Sunday, when the Kyojin faced the ...
Sands walked, reached on an error and scored twice in four plate appearances as the league-leading Tigers overcame a tough fight from the last-place BayStars.
Kazuma Okamoto hit a pair of solo home runs to help lift the Yomiuri Giants to a 3-2 come-from-behind win over the Central League-leading Hanshin Tigers, whose winning streak was snapped at eight games on Wednesday. Trailing 2-0 in the second, Okamoto, last year's CL ...
Second-year Hanshin Tigers import Joe Gunkel allowed a run over six innings to improve to 4-0 as the Central League-leading Hanshin Tigers held off the Tokyo Yakult Swallows 10-7 on Sunday. Gunkel struck out six while allowing a walk and five hits. He credited his ...
Tigers hit ground running as Teruaki Sato continues to excite
Let’s all stand back for a minute and marvel at Teruaki Sato. The Hanshin Tigers rookie is just 15 games into his career and already among the players generating the most buzz in NPB. Sato produced one of the early highlights of the season on Friday ...
Carp's Masato Morishita tames Tigers to first defeat of season
Masato Morishita threw six shutout innings as the Hiroshima Carp won 1-0 to end the Hanshin Tigers' perfect start to the season on Tuesday in the Central League. Morishita (1-0), who went 10-3 with a 1.91 ERA to win CL Rookie of the Year last ...
Central League teams out to end Giants’ reign at top
The first of a two-part NPB preview beginning with the 2021 Central League.
