May 27th Shimoyanagi v Ishii - Seibu's seventh innings surprise

The big news for Tigers is the signing of Craig Brazell. He should add hitting to the Tigers lineup but then Mayumi still needs to sort out his control of the pitching. Seibu did everything they could in this game but found that they couldn't quite cope. Box scores

        1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E
Lions   0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 8 1
Tigers  0 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 X 4 6 0

Starting lineups

Lions
1. Kataoka (Second)
2. Kuriyama (Left)
3. Nakajima (Short)
4. Nakamura (Third)
5. Hirao (First)
6. G. G. Sato
7. Satoh (Centre)
8. Ginjiro (Catcher)
9. Ishii (Pitcher)

Tigers
1. Akahoshi (Centre)
2. Sekimoto (Second)
3. Toritani (Short)
4. Kanemoto (Left)
5. Arai (Third)
6. Sakurai (Right)
7. Imaoka (First)
8. Kanoh (Catcher)
9. Shimoyanagi (Pitcher)

Both pitchers would start well. Certainly Kuriyama hit in Lions first but that disappeared in a double play and Tigers batters didn't do anything. In the Lions second Sato walked but in Tigers second Sakurai walked as well. Nothing came from either of these ventures. Lions third was quiet but Tigers third saw Shimoyanagi walk. Akahoshi then managed to ground him out going for second but he was safe. Akahoshi then stole second. Sekimoto also walked and Tigers had runners on first and second but Toritani grounded out for the final out.

In Lions fourth Nakamura hit with one out but no one was able to do anything with this. Tigers fourth saw Arai walk and he tried to steal second. Unlike Akahoshi's attempt it didn't work and the innings was scoreless. In Lions fifth Satoh produced a one out hit. He stole second but the second out brought up Ishii - an easy out. Well not quite, Ishii was next and he hit to right driving in the runner 1-0 Lions runner on first. Kataoka flew out to end the innings but the Lions were embarrassingly in the lead. Kanoh hit in the Tigers fifth but no one converted him and he stayed on first. In Lions sixth Kuriyama hit and stole second but that was as far as he got. In Tigers sixth Sekimoto led off with a hit. The next batter Toritani bunted to third who decided to go for Sekimoto heading for second. This didn't work and both batters were safe. An Arai fly out took Sekimoto to third but then the final batter, Sakurai, struck out and the innings was scoreless.

Shimoyanagi pitched the Lions seventh and gave up a lead off two base hit to Sato. This didn't result in anything except the at bat by Ishii indicating he would pitch the Tigers seventh. This is where things started to go wrong for the Lions. Imaoka led off with a two base hit and then his pinch runner, Hirano, was bunted to third by Kanoh. Hiyama (pinch hitter) hit driving in the tying run 1-& scores level, runner on first. Akahoshi hit straight at Ishii who fluffed the take and he was safe on first with Yamato (pinch running for Hiyama) on second. Exit Ishii to be replaced by Nogami. He gave up a timely hit to Sekimoto 2-1 Tigers runners on first and second. Maybe Nogami was not a good idea, let's try Hoshino - oops a hit to Toritani, bases loaded. Kanemoto was next, a dead ball oshidashi 3-1 Tigers, bases loaded maybe another pitcher. Shinya Okamoto perhaps? A sacrifice fly to Arai 4-1 Tigers, well at least its another out. Finally, Katsuragi (pinch hitter) flew out and the innings was over but the Tigers had a comfortable lead. Of course Mayumi switched pitchers for Seibu's eighth chosing Atchison. Shimoyanagi had thrown 87 pitches for his seven innings - a fine display of economical controlled pitching. Atchison was good, He did give up a two out hit to Nakajima but then got Nakamura to ground out and end the innings. Tigers eighth was pitched by Hsu and he retired the batters in order. For Lions ninth Mayumi took a risk and went with Fujikawa. He started badly walking Ohsaki (pinch hitter) and then giving up a hit to Sato, runners on first and second with no outs. Fujikawa then woke up and showed why he is the best closer in Japan striking out the next three batters in order to end the game. Tigers victory.

This was a valuable and well worked victory exploiting Shimoyanagi's fine pitching performance. Good batting in the seventh had taken advantage of some poor pitching from Seibu's relief. Fujikawa recorded his fourth save but still is not secure - he needs to be able to perform without runners on.