The starting pitchers are pitching well, but the batting line is silent. The Yomiuri Giants, who won the Central League for the first time in four years, are struggling in the postseason. The opponent is the third-ranked team in the league, so there is more pressure. This is why it is difficult to play an ultra-short game and fall baseball. Unexpected variables pop out.
The team collapsed by 1-2 in the second game of the Climax Series Final Stage (best-of-four) against the Yokohama BayStars on Wednesday. The team lost two consecutive games at its home ground Tokyo Dome. It started with one win in its No. 1 advantage and became one win and two losses.
I ran towards the top of the Japan Series, but I am on the verge of not even making it to the Japan Series. Yokohama is in such a good mood. It beat the second-place Hanshin Tigers with two wins in the first stage (best-of-two wins). It garnered four consecutive wins through games one to two with the first-place Yomiuri Giants.
The lineup was tied for two consecutive days.
Veteran ace Tomoyuki Sugano (35) pitched seven innings of two runs, but his team was lethargic. He only gave five hits and one run to Yokohama right-handed starter Shinichi Onuki. After two outs in the seventh inning, the team was hitless by the Yokohama bullpen.
He tied the game with difficulty in the bottom of the sixth inning when his team was losing 0-1. With runners on second and second bases with two outs, Kazuma Okamoto hit a timely hit to follow. However, 11 batters later failed to make one hit. He walked only once to get on base.
Yokohama scored the first run with three hits in the top of the fifth inning, but it was out of balance at the top of the seventh inning. Taylor Austin, the cleanup hitter, hit a superior home run. Sugano hit a fastball over the right fence at the Tokyo Dome, which was 150 kilometers per hour high.
Sugano is the king of most wins this season. He pitched in three games against Yokohama this year, recording one win and one loss with a 2.25 ERA. He had the highest ERA among the five teams facing the Central League.
Did the long break after the end of the regular season poison the batters.
At the first game held on Sunday, the team had four hits and suffered 0-2 defeat. Young ace Shosei Toko (24) pitched six ⅓ innings of two runs, but the lineup remained silent.
9 hits and 1 run in 2 games.
Naoki Yoshikawa, who played three times during the regular season, is missing due to injury. With 154 hits, Yoshikawa ranked first in the team with hits and batting average (0.287). As Rui Okoe and Raito Nakayama entered the third inning at the first and second games, they had no hits. As they cannot get on base, they have no way to score points.
We are helpless about the poor collective performance of hitters.
"I feel like I want to be a substitute," manager Shinnosuke Abe said in a media interview after the second game. Abe is a legendary catcher with 2,132 hits and 406 home runs during his 19 seasons.
The Yomiuri Giants played their final pennant race match on Oct. 2. They took a break from the 13th and started the final stage. Their last opponent was Yokohama, which they won 4-2.
During the regular season, Yomiuri had 16 wins, one draw and eight losses against Yokohama. He had the most wins against Yokohama. He ranked first, eight games ahead of Yokohama. However, the scene completely different from the unexpected pennant race in the post season. 메이저사이트
Japan's first professional baseball team, the Yomiuri Giants, is the most winning and most popular baseball team. However, the team has not won the Japan Series since 2012. It was in the Japan Series for two consecutive years from 2019 to 2020, and lost to the Softbank Hawks in all four games. It fell to the B-Class (4th to 6th place among the six teams) for two consecutive years from 2022-2023 before rising again this season.