8 ain’t enough …
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BayStars blow big lead, settle for tie with Swallows
It was hard to tell if the Yokohama BayStars were that bad or the Yakult Swallows were that good.
Whatever the case, Yokohama’s eight-run first inning wasn’t enough to earn a win, and the Central League’s first-place Swallows battled back to earn a 10-10 tie on Wednesday night at Jingu Stadium.
The BayStars fell one hit short of a club-record with eight straight hits in the first, and Tatsuya Shimozono recorded his first four-RBI game. But it was all for naught. Yakult’s Wladimir Balentien homered for the third straight game, a three-run shot in a four-run fourth, and added a scoring flyball to help the Swallows battle back for their 13th draw this season.
It was the third tie between the teams this season.
Five rookies took the mound at Jingu, starting with first-year righty Yuki Shichijo of Yalult. The BayStars hit eight rockets off him in .2 innings to knock him out, but rookie Kota Suda couldn’t take advantage of the big lead. He was gone after four-plus frames.
The Swallows also put up four runs in the fifth inning, and Shingo Kawabata’s two-run single tied the score in the sixth.
The final third of the game was scoreless with the Swallows falling 1-2-3 in the ninth.
DRAGONS 1, GIANTS 0
Chen Wei-yin fired 7.1 perfect innings and finished with a career-best two-hitter to help Chunichi blank Yomiuri at Nagoya Dome.
Chen (5-7) fanned four without a walk, allowing the tying run to reach third in the ninth before closing it out for his first career shutout of the Giants. Michihiro “Guts” Ogasawara broke up the perfecto bid in the eighth with a single up the middle and Shinnosuke Abe singled to open the ninth, but Chen retired the next three to end the game.
Batterymate Motonobu Tanishige knocked in the game’s only run with a clutch single to left in the sixth.
CARP 5, TIGERS 4
Takuro Ishii’s pinch-hit RBI double tied the score and Shogo Kimura knocked in the go-ahead run as Hiroshima rallied to beat Hanshin at Kyocera Dome Osaka.
Dennis Sarfate breezed through a 1-2-3 ninth, fanning two for his 30th save -- moving him ahead of Nippon Ham’s Hisashi Takeda for most in Japan.
PACIFIC LEAGUE
HAWKS 2, BUFFALOES 0
Nobuhiko Matsunaka broke a scoreless tie in the fourth with his 10th homer, and Tsuyoshi Wada (10-4) worked 6.2 shutout innings as front-running SoftBank blanked Orix at FYJ Dome.
Alex Cabrera’s RBI double padded the lead in the sixth and Brian Falkenborg shut the Buffaloes down in the ninth for his 13th save.
FIGHTERS 9, MARINES 0
Keisaku Itokazu (2-0) tossed a four-hitter for his first career shutout and Bobby Scales collected four hits as Nippon Ham bum-rushed Lotte at The Q.
The fifth-year righty fanned five with one walk and
Scales doubled twice and drove in two, including one in Nippon Ham’s six-run sixth that blew the game open.
EAGLES 2, LIONS 2
Hiroyuki Nakajima’s RBI single in the fifth evened the score and pitching dominated the rest of the way as Rakuten and Seibu played to a tie at Seibu Dome.