One Chance - June 1, 2013

Both starters were on their game this afternoon. Yokohama's Shugo Fujii allowed just 4 hits over 8 innings of work, one of them a line drive home run by Andruw Jones to lead off the bottom of the 5th inning.

Opposing Fujii was Rakuten's Satoshi Nagai.Nagai scattered 2 hits over the first 6 innings, but Yokohama had a concentration of 5 hits in the 7th inning to score 4 runs, turing the game around 4-1.

With that precious 4-1 lead going into the 9th inning, Shun Yamaguchi came in to close. That 3-run cushion turned out to be necessary as Yamaguchi allowed 4 hits while only recording a strikeout to the first five Eagles he faced. On the verge of cardiac arrest, Yamaguchi managed to get Hiroaki Shimauchi to pop out to third, then Motohiro Shima to fly out to center to end the game 4-3.

Of significance, this broke Yokohama's second 5-game losing streak of the season, a streak that has seen them fall from 3rd place to 5th. With Chunichi losing to Nippon Ham, the BayStars regained one spot in the standings and now rest in 4th place, just half a game behind the Carp.

With all of the losing, it's odd that Yokohama still doesn't look in too bad a shape to reach A-class. It probably has something to do with the absolute dominance of the Pacific League of the Central League in Inter-league yet again this year. Well, hopefully 9 games under .500 will be rock bottom this season and we don't see it again. We're at -8 and counting.