It’s how you finish. This is true of tonight’s game, the season, and also the Swallows game tonight as well. The Tigers got off to a 3-0 lead, but once again failed to put anything else up on the board after that. And ultimately, Neftali Soto teed off on a Masaki Oyokawa offering and the…
Yuki Nishi is definitely not having his best season by any means. He managed to get through six innings without surrendering a run, though, and the trio of Raul Alcantara, Suguru Iwazaki and Robert Suarez kept the bagels coming. Meanwhile, Mel Rojas Jr hit a towering home run in the top of the fourth, and…
Based on my Daily Sports Column (Japanese) / トレバーの虎場（デイリースポーツ）の連載コラムから Well, September was a real letdown of a month for the Hanshin Tigers, wasn’t it? Actually, though, they finished with a winning record (10-9-4), though you would never guess it based on the numbers or the mood in Kansai. Those numbers included… only 10 home runs,…
After crunching the numbers a little, it has become apparent that the Tigers really need some help from everyone who is facing the Swallows. That, and they need to keep on winning. They got off to a hot start, with four hits and a walk accounting for a four-spot in the first inning. This included…
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not not into novels. It’s just that most of the reading and reviewing I have done on this site is for non-fiction books written about (or by, or both) Japanese baseball players and teams. This genre of book comes out of right field in some ways. In fact, although baseball…
One red-hot #3 hitter and his bat were enough for the win again. Jefry Marte hit a home run for the third straight game, and that was the only run scored in this one, despite chances from both teams. Joe Gunkel pitched outstanding, allowing only two runners into scoring position in 6+ innings of work,…
This game was essentially over after seven batters. Haruto Takahashi worked around a fluky hit (that could have been an error) in the top of the first, and then the third batter for the Tigers, Jefry Marte, hit one out of the park to provide all the runs this game had. Takahashi went the distance…
You might not have been tracking along with me, but Hanshin hit just 10 home runs the entire month of September. It is a big reason that the team was unable to get on a roll, and ultimately, it saw the team drop into second place. But tonight, the two sluggers who were in the…
It is hard to win games in which you serve up three home runs, especially if you only hit one yourselves. The team had chances, pulled even a couple of times, but simply could not get the job done. They got out-homered in the series 6-1 and the three-game party at Tokyo Dome over the…
Koyo Aoyagi has not been the same since the Olympics. He has now given up 17 runs in his last five starts after giving up just 24 (21 earned) in his first 16 starts. That said, the bats once again came up short when they had chances. Two straight innings of bases-loaded situations yielded two…