Rami's Grand Slam Seals Bay Fate

Giants' number four batter Alex Ramirez was the first out of the game as the Giants up 3 on the board in the top of the first against Yokohama starter Randolph in the rubber match between the BayStars and Giants on Thursday night. But with two down and the bases loaded, Ramirez didn't miss his chance his second time around, connecting with a huge grand slam to the orange colored fans in left to put the Giants up 7-1.

That seemed to wake Randolph up. He then struck out Kamei and blanked the Giants for three innings thereafter. In all, though, Randolph walked 6 batters and hit one, allowing 8 hits and 7 runs (6 earned). Enough with the walks already! We're working on reducing them, remember?

Right handed reliever Kentaro Kuwahara pitched a fairly uneventful 6th and 7th innings. The speedy Sakamoto (5 for 5 - 3 singles, a double and triple with a sacrifice bunt) did have a 1-out triple in the 6th, but was stranded there. But Kosuke Katoh seemed to also fail in the walk reduction category, facing 9 batters in the 8th inning, walking 3 of them, and allowing a pair of doubles and a 2-run base hit substitute outfielder Suzuki. Bad, bad, bad. Takamiya closed out for the 'Stars, allowing just Sakamoto's third single of the day, but nothing more.

On offense, the BayStars managed only two runs. Uchikawa led off the bottom of the first with a double to right and came home when Castillo grounded out to short an out later. Castillo later accounted for 3 of the BayStars' 11 hits, singling each time thereafter, including a head dive into first base! Has he been watching Koshien?

Numbers 4, 5, and 6 batters, on the other hand, combined for an 0 for 11 clip. No matter how often Castillo got on, Murata, Sledge, and Yoshimura killed any and all momentum. The only other run we got came in the 7th. Hashimoto had a 1-out base hit, but was forced at second on a round ball to first by Ishikawa. (Ishikawa did go 3 for 4, though.) Kinjoh then hit a pinch-hit double to right, but Ishikawa held at third. But not for long as Uchikawa singled him in to bring the score to 7-2 (at the time).

Well, we only allowed one home run against the Giants (after allowing zero the day before), so I would kind of call that a bright spot. But having allowed all but one home run so far this season be solo shots coming into this game, the grand slam really hurt. And as Obana-kantoku wants to address, 2 of those 4 runs were put on via bases on balls. We must start reducing the number of walks!

Hmmm. The Tsubamegun guys had the Takada Count for how many times Takada-kantoku lost games for Yakult. Christopher had the Mayumi Count for Mayumi-kantoku's game losing decisions for the Tigers. I think I may need to start a Walking Count to track the correlation between walking and losing. So let's go through the games so far:

    Date  Walks  Runs  ERuns  Result
    3/26    6      7      7   Loss vs HAN
    3/27    2      4      2   Loss
    3/28    3      2      2   Win
    3/29   --     --     --   --
    3/30    1      4      3   Loss vs YOM
    3/31    5      5      4   Win
    4/ 1    8     12     11   Loss

Hmmm. That doesn't necessarily show a correlation, does it? I guess I'll need to do a little more work on this. But be warned. I've got my eyes on those walks!