Hosts T-Ray and Sanjay share the team’s latest news, including the scoop on the four import players, and Shintaro Fujinami’s signing, and then discuss some of the factors that might result in the team not repeating as CL champs this year. Don’t worry – Episode 192 will look at the flip side of this issue!…
Sources: Hanshin Official / Daily Sports The Hanshin Tigers announced on November 30 that they have reached an agreement with right-handed Panamanian pitcher Javy Guerra. The 28-year-old will wear #00 and his contract is estimated to be worth one million US dollars (¥147 million). Guerra sent the following comment on to Japan: “Nice to meet…
The long wait is over. For just the second time in NPB (1950-present) history, the Hanshin Tigers are the best team in Japan. This series went down to the wire, but the final game was lopsided from the start. Even in the innings that the Tigers didn’t score, they knocked on the door and put…
A loss is a loss, so there is no point in complaining about what seemed from these biased eyes to be an inconsistent strike zone. Normally steady Shoki Murakami walked two (on close calls) and Yuki Nishi walked one on a questionable call, while Yoshinobu Yamamoto got the benefit of several calls the other way…
It’s always a little alarming when people start talking about a perfect game before it’s half over, but Shoki Murakami was dealing. No one reached base against him through four innings, conjuring up images of his first start in 2023 against the Yomiuri Giants (April 12, 7 perfect innings). The perfect game vanished against the…
The Hanshin Tigers hosted the Climax Series Final Stage for the first time in team history. Would they be alright coming into the most important part of the year completely cold? The pitchers would probably be alright, but how about the hitters? Well, they didn’t exactly light up the scoreboard or hit the cover off…
Sometimes you have to watch games to get a true feel for what they were like. The scoreboard and stat line aren’t enough. This one was a bit of a stressful affair, as Masashi Itoh allowed the leadoff runner to reach base in five of his seven innings. In the eighth, they got two 2-out…
The Tigers are historically a bad team against the Giants. Through the end of the 2020 season, it was an 827-1086-71 (.432) mark. Fortunately, the Tigers have started chipping away at that deficit in the last three years. Two years ago, it was 13-9-3 in our favor. Last year, once again there was a four-game…
Thursday night, the Hanshin Tigers clinched their first Central League pennant since 2005, and just the sixth in club history. From what I observed on TV and in the newspapers, they were up quite late into the night (as they deserved to fully celebrate their accomplishment). They then had to travel to Hiroshima very fatigued…
History was made at Hanshin Koshien Stadium last night, September 14. The Tigers had a magic number of 1, and were riding a 10-game winning streak. Their perfect September was on the line, and an 11-game streak had not been achieved in 41 seasons. Nevertheless, the team put aside some early-inning jitters (see recap below)…