Baseball / Japanese Baseball Sep 25, 2021
Tigers' Haruto Takahashi wins duel against Giants ace Tomoyuki Sugano
by Jason Coskrey
Takahashi struck out 13 while allowing five hits and a walk over the distance.
Baseball / Japanese Baseball | The week in NPB Jul 19, 2021
NPB rolls into Olympic break after eventful first half
by Jason Coskrey
Every NPB player on a first-team roster was deactivated on Thursday in one mass transaction. It was just a procedural move — because there are no games scheduled for the next 10 days — but many fans still got a kick out of the ...
Japanese Baseball Jul 11, 2021
Mercedes (5-1), who along with teammate Angel Sanchez will represent the Dominican Republic at the Tokyo Games, struck out six and walked two while allowing seven hits.
Japanese Baseball Jul 4, 2021
Ito (5-4) allowed four hits, walked two and hit a batter while striking out two on a rainy Saturday at Mazda Stadium.
Baseball / Japanese Baseball | The week in NPB Jun 28, 2021
Streaking Giants set sights on first place
by Jason Coskrey
Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. That safety warning, or some version of it, appears on the passenger side mirrors of vehicles in several nations, including the United States. It's a warning the Hanshin Tigers should heed. They may still be driving at ...
Baseball / Japanese Baseball | The week in NPB Jun 14, 2021
Buffaloes rise to occasion to claim interleague crown
by Jason Coskrey
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 ...
Baseball / Japanese Baseball | The week in NPB May 17, 2021
Roki Sasaki makes highly anticipated NPB debut with Marines
by Jason Coskrey
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 ...
Baseball / Japanese Baseball May 14, 2021
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).
Japanese Baseball May 9, 2021
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 ...
Japanese Baseball Apr 28, 2021
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 ...
Baseball / Japanese Baseball | The week in NPB Apr 26, 2021
NPB prepares to go back behind closed doors
by Jason Coskrey
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 ...
Baseball / Japanese Baseball Apr 26, 2021
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.