The Tigers put men on base in the first three innings, only to snuff out chances with double plays each time. It was beginning to look like the Swallows would win their first day game of the season, while the Tigers lost theirs, as starter Yuki Nishi sputtered in the middle innings. However, a clutch…
Manager Akihiro Yano decides to give cleanup hitter Yusuke Ohyama the day off. Rookie Teruaki Sato gets his first start at third base, where he played his whole college career but where has yet to play a regular-season inning as a pro. And let’s give him the responsibility of batting fourth, too. Looks like a…
Takumi Akiyama had much to atone for after his last outing, a disastrous one against the Giants. For the game’s first seven innings, he did just that. And the bats sprayed a bunch of singles and watched a lot of bad pitches by Aren Kuri, which enabled them to piece together a bunch of early…
Coming into this game, it had been a full 27 innings (three games) since the Tigers had recorded an RBI hit. Wednesday’s loss saw them score their lone run on a sacrifice fly, and the game before, it was Teruaki Sato’s home run. On Sunday, their seven runs came on: a two-run homer, a wild…
For the second straight game, our bats failed to produce multiple runs. While this one was close most of the way, two home runs in the bottom of the eighth served up by Yuta Iwasada made this one a blowout in the end. Hoping to avoid the sweep tomorrow with Wei-Yin Chen making his top-squad…
The Tigers hate Nagoya Dome. You can rename it whatever you want (and they have — it is now Vantelin Dome Nagoya), but we simply struggle to score runs under that bubble. Sure, golden rookie Teruaki Sato has enough power to practically hit one through the roof… but what about the rest of the lineup?…
Friday night, a boatload of walks and a pair of errors extended the Tigers’ losing streak to three, and ended the Baystars’ winless streak at 12. Saturday, the Baystars got thumped HARD. On this day, the lead changed hands four times, once thanks to a pair of defensive blunders by the visiting team – a…
If Friday’s loss left a bad taste in the mouth of Tigers’ fans, you’d better believe it did the same to the Tigers’ players. And they made the Baystars pitchers in particular pay the price. This one was a no-doubter from the onset, and though I was in attendance, I missed the first inning, which…
There’s nothing more dangerous than playing a team that is riding an extra-long winless streak. You just don’t want to be the team that ends it for them. And yet these Tigers played their worst game of the year, and what honestly should have been a 1-1 tie at worst ended up a blowout loss,…
When the Tigers were unable to put up runs in the first despite two extra base hits and a walk, the game turned south. Real fast. And the home runs just kept coming. For them. And we go home defeated and hoping to keep the losing streak to a minimum.