When Will The Swallows

Agree with everything you say JBB. It's been so frustrating to watch so far. However, as you say, their batting line-up has a lot of quality from top to bottom with, the guys you mentioned plus the likes of Aoki and Miyamoto.

So I'm hoping (praying) that given a little time they will start to wake up and start playing to their potential.

Well, with the weekend series against the BayStars (April 21st-23rd) it seems that Yakult's bats have now woken up, but they are now leaking runs like a sieve.

I was present on Saturday for that painful 8 run Yokohama 7th inning - ouch!

Ihara's first 2 games have been a revelation though. If he can maintain this kind of form then it looks as though we may have found a regular solution to the pesky right field position. He's also very fast around the bases and in the field, too. Promising stuff. Manaka and Miyade can now be used off the bench.

Hopefully by the time the inter-league games are here, we'll have both batting and pitching working in tandem and we'll become the strong team many people expected us to be this season.

Well I guess this is just a month of frustration for the Swallows, first it was the bats, now it's the pitching. Hopefully both will get in synch sometime soon.

I've always felt that Manaka should be a pinch hitter/runner. I don't know why, but I prefer Miyade over Manaka, probably because everytime I actually get to watch a Swallows game, Miyade gets some hits.

Agree with you about Manaka, and he tends to work well in a pinch hitting role, too.

As for Miyade, I like him, too, and he is very popular with the Jingu regulars I always sit with. However, he doesn't deliver consistently enough and hasn't lived up to his physical potential (someone told me he was the tallest Japanese player in NPB, not sure if this is true or not) - he's a big lad but doesn't show a great deal of power at the plate.

After all that talk of Ihara, he was promptly replaced by Manaka for last night's (25th April) loss to the Dragaons, who was hitless in 3 at bats.

Kaz Ishii looked pretty poor last night, too. Our chances this year hinge on whether both him and Takatsu can re-create the form they showed for the Swallows before leaving for MLB, or exhibit the form that got them dropped by their MLB teams. Despite glimpses of quality so far from both, it looks like it may be the latter situation.

Oh well. It still is relatively early days. But if we're to stand any chance of mounting a push for the pennant, we need to get going pretty sharpish. Especially with the start that our beloved crosstown neighbours have had.

Here's hoping.

Well, the start of the inter-league games has been good for Yakult so far with two good wins over Seibu (May 9th & 10th). This is our first series win since the season opening series against Hanshin!

Our bats are now on fire and we are now starting to look pretty frightening offensively. This has helped overcome our inconsistencies in pitching (the fact that we beat Seibu over 2 games despite giving up 16 runs!).

Hopefully we can go on a bit of a run now and get a little closer to the CL's top 3 by the end of the inter-league games.

Wow, how about Greg LaRocca the last two games? A total of 5 home runs (two coming in the same inning), with a total of 10 RBI! He seems like he's found a nice groove. Now if these guys on fire could light a match under Furuta to get him going as well.

Amazing stuff from LaRocca! Everytime he comes to the plate he looks dangerous and it seems to be contageous - what with Aoki hitting a grand slam in the first Lions' game, and even Miyade getting 3 hits last night.

I really like LaRocca. Like the other Yakult foreign position players, Ramirez and Riggs, he always plays with a smile on his face and has integrated really well into the close-knit Swallows team, both on and off the field.

Wow, got absolutely clobbered by the Swallows. It's almost OK because the birds are my favorite CL team. Lions have given up 56 runs over the last 5 games! Ouch.

7 of 8 games, what more can you ask for? I'm loving this. I went to the second game agasint Seibu when they scored 11 in the 4th, it was amazing.

Here's to the Swallows racing up the standings, almost at .500 and raising.

Indeed. It's all going frighteningly well at the moment.

But the true test of the revival will be if we can beat the PL big boys such as Softbank and Lotte instead of a horrible Seibu team (as they were during that first series), the Buffaloes, or Eagles.

I have faith though. We performed pretty well during last year's inter-league games, too.

How about Riggs hitting .295 and 14 HRs and 16 doubles! Not to mention he leads in extra base hits, he leads in doubles, and is second in HRs!

He is doing very well at the moment (and in fact, has been pretty much great since half way through last season).

Just need Ramirez to catch fire and we'll be laughing.

Aoki's also caught fire again and, all in all, things are still looking good. We're now in touch with the Central League top three, and if we can maintain the inter-league form we'll be in a position to push for the pennant come the resumption of CL hostilities.

And on this note, today it was announced that Riggs won the CL MVP for May 2006.

In May he hit .324 with 12 home runs and 23 RBIs.

Well done that man.

Additionally, Yakult slipped to second in the Inter-league standings after their 2-1 series loss to the Marines (May 30th-June 1st). We ran the reigning Japanese Champions pretty close, and indeed were only the second CL team (after Hanshin) to take a game off them. Last night's tight 4-2 loss really came down to a couple of wild pitches from Gonzalez (one which was during an intentional walk) so there's hope for us yet!

We've become a much more resilient team as of late, so I'm sure we'll pick ourselves up for the next series at home against the Buffaloes.

Sayonara home run! Riggs topped everything with his 3 run shot in the bottom of the 10th in the game that they scored 2 runs in each the 8th and 9th to tie. I was lucky enough to have gone to the game and it was very slow and not very exciting until it picked up in about the 8th. With Aoki batting first in the 9th I knew they had a good shot to get at least 2 runs.

Do you know of any Japan baseball site in English for Yakult?

Thanks.