Like a caged bird …
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Some rights reserved.
Swallows fall to 5th straight loss
The Central League-leading Yakult Swallows are playing like birds trapped in a cage.
The Swallows managed just five hits and fell to their fifth straight loss, a 1-0 whitewash to the Hiroshima Carp on Tuesday at The Zoom.
Recent import Brian Barden blasted his first homer in Japan and Bryan Bullington (11-5) tossed seven scoreless innings as the Carp snapped a three-game skid.
Bullington scattered four hits, a walk and a hit batter, while fanning a pair to earn his CL-best 11th win.
“Well it’s only my third one here at Mazda Stadium, so it’s nice to get another W here in front of a good crowd tonight,” Bullington said in the hero interview.
The Carp had moved into second place on Thursday before dropping three straight over the weekend to the Yomiuri Giants. They’re in fourth place with more than a month's worth of the days of summer still ahead.
“Right now we’re in the middle of a playoff hunt. We’ve got a couple of months left and we’re going to try to play good baseball and work our way to the playoffs,” Bullington said.
Barden took Masanori Ishikawa (6-6) deep to left in the second inning and also singled in the fifth.
Dennis Sarfate [friend of JBD] allowed a single and nothing else in the ninth to wrap up his 27th save.
GIANTS 7, BAYSTARS 6
Alex Ramirez had his first three-hit game of the season and Yokohama closer Shun Yamaguchi (1-3) uncorked a wild pitch in the ninth inning to help Yomiuri extend its longest winning streak of the season to six with
a victory at Nagano.
Yokohama’s Terrmel Sledge hammered two homers and made a bid for his third three-homer game of the season in his final at-bat in the ninth, but his long drive to right went foul as the BayStars fell for fifth time this month.
TIGERS 1, DRAGONS 0
Atsushi Nomi (6-7) carried a no-hitter into the eighth before Ryosuke Hirata’s dunker to left fell in and the southpaw starter also knocked in the game’s only run with a second-inning single to right as Hanshin topped Chunichi at Nagoya Dome.
Maximo Nelson (6-9) yielded one run on eight hits and walked three with seven Ks but the Tigers still won their season-high fourth straight behind Nomi’s career-best 13 Ks.
PACIFIC LEAGUE
FIGHTERS 4, LIONS 0
Bobby Scales cracked a two-run homer, his sixth since joining the club on July 2, in the seventh to break up a scoreless tie and Brian Wolfe (10-4) worked six scoreless innings to lead Nippon Ham past host Seibu.
The win moved Nippon Ham 2.5 behind PL-leading SoftBank.
MARINES 6, HAWKS 2
Tomoya Satozaki had three hits and two RBIs and Yoshihisa Naruse (8-8) handcuffed SoftBank on five hits over eight innings as Lotte cruised at FYJ Dome.
Yoshifumi Okada also had two hits and a pair of RBIs for Lotte.
BUFFALOES 3, EAGLES 2
Takahiro “T.O.” Okada tied the score in the ninth with a clutch single to center and Shogo Akada’s two-out, walk-off single [his career seventh walk-off hit] to left sent host Orix past Rakuten at Kobe.