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The Central League postseason battle figures to be the best since the playoff system began four years ago, and two teams took big steps forward on Sunday.
The Hanshin Tigers completed a three-game sweep of the first-place Yakult Swallows behind Craig Brazell’s three-run double and Takahiro Arai’s two-run blast for a 5-2 win at Kyocera Dome.
The win left the Tigers five games behind the leaders a week into August. The Tigers moved a game over .500 for the first time since April 22.
“What matters is what we do from here on out,” said Hanshin skipper Akinobu Mayumi.
If was the first three-game sweep suffered by the Swallows under skipper Junji Ogawa, who took over the club as interim manager in the middle of last season and earned the job permanently.
The Yomiuri Giants, meanwhile, extended their season-best winning streak to five, completing a weekend sweep of the Hiroshima Carp with a 5-3 win at The Zoom.
Kentaro Nishmura (4-0) won his fourth straight as a member of the rotation, and drove in his first run in five years -- with a double that came after a couple of walks -- as the Giants beat the Carp for the seventh straight time.
Shinnosuke Abe hit his 10th longball, giving him double digits in homers over 11 consecutive years since he joined the club.
Second-year star Hisayoshi Chono was plunked in the head and left the game in the eighth inning, but never lost consciousness and went to the hospital for precautionary reasons only.
Nishimura went seven innings, yielding five hits with three walks and six Ks. Yuya Kubo nailed down his sixth save with a perfect ninth.
BAYSTARS 2, DRAGONS 0
Norihiro Nakamura, who was the Japan Series MVP when Chunichi won it all in 2007, singled in the winning runs in the top of the ninth as three Yokohama hurlers combined on a four-hitter at Nagoya Dome.
The BayStars won two of three, battling past the Dragons -- who fell into fifth place -- on skipper Takao Obana’s birthday.
PACIFIC LEAGUE
FIGHTERS 8, EAGLES 1
Masaru Takeda (9-6) fired six innings of one-run ball and Nippon Ham roughed up Masahiro Tanaka (10-4) for seven runs, four on homers, over eight innings to win the third of a four-game set at The Kleenex Box.
Takeda took over the league lead in ERA at 1.30.
HAWKS 8, LIONS 1
Tadashi Settsu (10-5) scattered three hits and a walk and seven Ks over the distance as SoftBank topped host Seibu.
Seibu’s Kazuhisa Ishii (4-6) fanned Hitoshi Tamura in the fourth inning to record his career 2,000th strikeout. He needed the fewest innings to reach the mark, moving ahead of Yutaka Enatsu.
BUFFALOES 7, MARINES 2
Tomotaka Sakaguchi had his ninth three-hit game and led five players with a run driven in as Orix topped Lotte at The Q.
[Edited by: jgibson on Aug 8, 2011 6:31 PM]