Royal ascent …
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Some rights reserved.
Yuki Saito helped the Nippon Ham Fighters make a royal ascent atop the Pacific League on Sunday, working the minimum but keeping the Seibu Lions scoreless.
The result was a 1-0 victory for the Fighters that gave them sole possession of first by a half-game after the SoftBank Hawks later lost in Chiba.
Saito (3-2) worked around four hits and three walks by fanning five, and four relievers each tossed a scoreless inning to close out Nippon Ham first single-season eight-game winning streak over the Lions since 1972.
“I want to go nine good innings next time out,” said Saito, who won his first game since April 24.
The only run scored on an error by Hiroyuki Nakajima in the fourth inning. That made Takayuki Kishi (3-3) the hard-luck loser. He went the distance, scattering five hits and a walk with one strikeout, but lost on an unearned run.
Hisashi Takeda notched his Japan-leading 25th save with a perfect ninth. He is ahead of the pace for the NPB single-season save record of 46, shared by Chunichi’s Hitoki Iwase and Hanshin’s Kyuji Fujikawa.
MARINES 8, HAWKS 0
Third-year righty Hiroki Ueno (1-0) won his first pro start in style, blanking visiting SoftBank on six hits and no walks with five Ks as Lotte knocked the Hawks from first place in the PL.
Shota Ishimine had three hits and drove in three to back Ueno, the second Marines hurler to win his first pro start after rookie Atsushi Kobayashi won on Thursday.
EAGLES 4, BUFFALOES 3
Kensuke Uchimura had an RBI single in the third and tripled in the ninth before scoring the winning run on Ryo Hijirisawa’s walk-off infield single as Rakuten edged Orix at The Kleenex Box.
CENTRAL LEAGUE
GIANTS 3, SWALLOWS 2
Junpei Ono (1-0) overcame a case of nerves, allowing two runs over five innings, and Shinnosuke Abe cracked a three-run shot as Yomiuri topped front-running Yakult at The Big Egg.
Abe struck for his seventh blast of the season after Yakult’s Norichika Aoki had put the Swallows up 2-0 with a clutch two-run single.
TIGERS 12, BAYSTARS 9
Hanshin blew a 6-0 lead, but Takahiro Arai blasted a go-ahead solo shot in the seventh and a grand slam in the eighth to fight past host Yokohama in a 4:16-hour slugfest.
The Tigers had three other homers and Matt Murton went 4-for-6 with two RBIs for Hanshin.
CARP 5, DRAGONS 0
Junpei Shinoda (3-3) survived five scoreless innings and Ryuhei Matsuyama’s two-run single proved to be enough as Hiroshima finished off its first sweep of Chunichi at Nagoya Dome in nine seasons.