Samurai Japan holds off South Korea in last game of Premier12 Super Round
Samurai Japan did just enough against rival South Korea during what amounted to an entertaining dress rehearsal for the Premier12 final. Now the Japanese will head into the gold-medal game hoping practice makes perfect. Japan scored six runs in the third inning then had to overcome ...
Swallows star Tetsuto Yamada downs Dragons with three-run blast in 10th
Tetsuto Yamada broke a 10th-inning tie with a three-run home run, lifting the Tokyo Yakult Swallows to a 5-2 victory over the Chunichi Dragons on Saturday afternoon. Yamada, who this year became the first player in Nippon Professional Baseball to steal 30 bases and hit ...
Swallows put on show at plate while Masanori Ishikawa dominates on mound against BayStars
Tetsuto Yamada and Keiji Obiki both bagged three-run homers in the first inning, opening the floodgates as the Tokyo Yakult Swallows blew away the Yokohama BayStars 15-2 in the Central League on Wednesday. With their offense clicking into gear from the outset, the last-place Swallows ...
Takahiro Araki tied the game with a ninth-inning, pinch-hit RBI single, helping the Tokyo Yakult Swallows overturn a late deficit in their 6-5 interleague victory over the Seibu Lions on Saturday. The Swallows salvaged a win by beating Lions closer Tatsushi Masuda (3-1) after blowing ...
Tetsuto Yamada and Wladimir Balentien each hit a pair of home runs, while Norichika Aoki went 4-for-4, as the Tokyo Yakult Swallows hammered the Yomiuri Giants 11-2 on Thursday. Former major leaguer Albert Suarez got the win in his first start for the Swallows. The ...
Swallows' hot-hitting lineup firing on all cylinders
Anyone who watched the Tokyo Yakult Swallows play this past week probably still has the Tokyo Ondo stuck in their head. When they close their eyes, they might still see a sea of small, mostly green umbrellas bobbing up and down in rhythm to ...
Tokyo Yakult Swallows slugger Wladimir Balentien stays ahead of curve at plate
Every time Wladimir Balentien hits a home run, and he's hit quite a few since joining the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in 2011, he has to go back to the drawing board and recalibrate his approach. Because he knows in the time it took to jog ...
Tokyo Yakult Swallows second baseman Tetsuto Yamada has won his sixth monthly MVP award after leading Japan in batting average, runs scored, stolen bases and on-base percentage in July, Nippon Professional Baseball announced Wednesday. The 26-year-old posted a .425 batting average and set a team ...
All-around talents Tetsuto Yamada, Yuki Yangita deserving of spotlight
Three seasons ago, a Triple 3 campaign was treated as something of a phenomenon. The feat — finishing a season with at least a .300 average, 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases — had been accomplished before Tetsuto Yamada and Yuki Yanagita both ...
Tetsuto Yamada, Norichika Aoki ignite offense in Swallows' sixth straight victory
Tetsuto Yamada drove in three runs and scored three times in the Tokyo Yakult Swallows' 12-6 victory over the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks Tuesday, handing last year's Japan Series champions their first interleague loss. In front of 28,154 at Jingu Stadium, the Swallows won their sixth ...
SoftBank's Yuki Yanagita stands out among NPB crowd
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 ...
Tetsuto Yamada, two years removed from being Japan's brightest young star, received an estimated ¥70 million pay cut from the Tokyo Yakult Swallows on Tuesday. The 25-year-old Yamada, the CL's 2015 MVP, batted .300 with 30-plus stolen bases and 30-plus home runs for the second ...
