Let us talk about Carp 29th April - May Day

Tigers second series against the Hiroshima outfit went like the first with home advantage.
Carp started Bullington in the first game and he was superb except for one significant mistake. His pitch count was much better than Messenger who was also excellent. I would have thought though that after the lead went to Tigers Wada should have brought Oh on instead of the usual stupid sentimentality of a complete game with a 1-0 lead. This is the sort of decision that gives management a bad name and it wasn't necessary for Messenger to throw 119 pitches. The 1 run which was all Tigers needed to win the game and came courtesy of the bat of Fukudome who hit a solo home run in the bottom of the eighth. Bullington actually gave up only 2 hits and no walks in his pitching spell with one hit being the crucial one.
The second game saw Fujinami and a Tigers big innings. It also exposed serious weaknesses in Tigers fielding despite the win. Four errors is too much and it was only the Carp's inability to exploit this that helped Tigers. In the second innings Tigers raced to a 7 run lead with a big innings taking apart Nomura - the Carp pitcher in ruthless fashion. Gomez hit a three run home run during the slaughter which was made even more surprising in that Nomura was not removed during this innings. Fujinami then proceeded to do exactly the same as Nomura - he had been reliable in the first two innings but then disintegrated badly allowing the Carp to score 4 runs in their fourth. Tigers took another run off Nomura in the third which made the score 8-4 Tigers and this stayed the same. Fujinami managed to hang around until the fifth which gave him the victory and Tigers took the series.
The final game was predictably a Carp victory. Here we saw Tigers struggle against Ohsera and there was some stupid play by the batters against this pitcher. They all felt that they had to swing at outside pitches which were quite clearly going outside and Ohsera's strike outs all came this way. Iwazaki Tigers pitcher stank and rapidly gave up runs with Eldred hitting a three run home run. Nomura decided to give Ohsera a complete game shutout but the pitcher was tiring by the eighth and in the ninth Gomez hit a solo home run which put paid to that attempt. Nomura (Carp's coach) just to show he is as a complete idiot as Wada then kept his pitcher in for some punishment pitching ensuring that Ohsera finished on a pitch count of 148 pitches. Final score 6-1 Carp.
Carp have started strongly and have impressed in some respects. However, the propensity to bunt at stupid moments by any of their batters and the generally bumbling fielding gives ground for suspecting that they will not finish at the top of the board this season. The mishandling of Ohsera also suggests this. Tigers too have too much idiocy and their fielding needs to tighten up. They also need to take their options much better - they had plenty of chances in the third game but missed them. Still Koshien has proved to be a happy hunting ground for Tigers with 10 victories to 2 losses so far.