The good news: facing Yomiuri on the weekend has meant being able to avoid ace Sugano 2 series in a row. The bad news: it would mean facing other pitchers that the Tigers generally fare poorly against: Mikolas and Taguchi. The question is, would we be able to figure out one of our hardest pitchers…
Last season, Hanshin won just 5 of 13 matches in Nagoya against the dismal Chunichi Dragons. But the hard times at the dome go back further than one season. In the 20 years of the Dome’s existence, Hanshin has put up a pitiful 82-153-5 record there. So there’s no doubt that expecting a sweep, no matter how…
Rare is the day that the Hanshin Tigers baseball game is not broadcast on a local TV station. Almost as rare is the day that a game will be broadcast in its entirety. Perhaps this is because of the early start times (6:00pm, which I suppose is when the news is supposed to be on),…
Yesterday, we had a look at the battle for playing time on the pitching staff. Today, we continue our look at the Tigers’ lineup and who can be expected to stand on the field and in the batter’s box at the start of 2017. In case you missed it, Fumihito Haraguchi has been given the…
* If you’ve read the reports for the 1st Cool, the 2nd Cool, or the 3rd Cool, you know this already. For those of you who are new to H-TEN… The Japanese use the word クール (from the French cours = course / installment / season) to divide the spring training sessions into parts. But since…
* The Japanese use the word クール (from the French cours = course / installment / season) to divide the spring training sessions into parts. But since クール is usually used to mean “cool” I have turned it into a cool headline. Hope the クール factor isn’t lost on you! Happy Valentine’s Day, my western world friends! Today…
* The Japanese use the word クール (from the French cours = course / installment / season) to divide the spring training sessions into parts. But since クール is usually used to mean “cool” I have turned it into a cool headline. Hope you’re クール with that! Happy National Foundation Day, everyone! Yesterday was a day off for…
Every loss stings a little. And with the season winding down and the pennant already decided, the only thing left was to see if the Tigers could sweep this one and keep the Grim Reaper waiting around a little while longer. The pounding on the door was in fact the angel of death. Game 134…
Five straight losses. Against teams that are beatable. Three at home, and two on the road with your best pitchers starting. Could it get any worse for the Tigers? The only good news was that they would host the Yokohama DeNA BayStars, who had a rough August and who have struggled against our Tigers. But…
A three-game sweep at the hands of the then-fifth place Swallows pushed the Tigers down a spot in the standings, and the dream of reaching the playoffs seemed less likely to come true. A two-game stint in Nagoya with the team’s two best pitchers slated to start should have been the remedy to the team’s…