March 22nd, 2009
Orix Buffaloes 2
Tokyo Swallows 5
Streak: Won 2 Last 5: WWLWW
(Jingu Stadium)
Ryo Kawashima pitched six decent innings of six hit, two run baseball to earn the win in this wind-blown spring training game. Both runs were surrendered in the fourth off of a blast by our good friend, Tuffy Rhodes. He’s done that a lot to us over the years.
The rains threatened the entire time, but the crowd (all 2,400 of them) was largely spared a drenching. Instead, they got to watch the front half of the lineup continue to flex its muscles. Add Aoki to the mix and the Swallows look quite a bit more potent at the beginning of this season than they did during the latter half of last season.
The Swallows managed to put three runs on the board in the first inning after Keizo Kawashima brought Fukuchi around to score with no outs, and then Guiel blasted a two run homer to right field.
With two outs in the second inning, Fukuchi tripled to right, and then K. Kawashima hit second double in as many at-bats to make it 4-0, Tokyo.
Tokyo would score its fifth and final run in the sixth inning after Tanaka drew a walk, and Morioka doubled to right. Tokyo 5-2 Orix.
A big round of applause for K. Kawashima who went 3-4 with two rbi’s! Fukuchi, Guiel and Tanaka (two walks) also deserve a pat on the back for reaching base twice in this game.
Relieving R. Kawashima on the mound was Hagiwara, who had a bit of a rough time and was yanked after only a third of an inning (one beaning, and one hit–eight pitches total), and Satou got the birds out of the inning without allowing any runners to cross home plate.
Oshimoto and Matsuoka then came in to pitch the last two innings with Matsuoka earning the save.
Observations:
Aside from the fact that he was charged with a fielding error today, Morioka looks legit. One of the reasons that I like him most is that he, K. Kawashima, Miyamoto, Hatakeyama, D’Antona and Tanaka virtually guarantee that there is no room for Shiroishi on the field (much less in the dugout). And there are several guys that I’m not even mentioning right now (like Takeuchi), who would easily play before Shiroishi (well, if a sane manager was at the helm), so our prayers may finally have been answered!
The outfield is crowded as well. A healthy Guiel means that Fukuchi is in left and Aoki, naturally, will be manning the middle. Iihara is definitely on the fringe at the moment, and there seems to be a real likelihood that he might be observing the first half of many games from the bench. Kajimoto is also making a strong case for permanent first team membership right now, so Iihara is going to have to light it up when he gets his chance once the regular season rolls around.
A couple of guys still haven’t figured out where they left their bats after the end of winter camp. Aikawa (catcher) and Tanaka (2B), two guys who don’t seem to have a whole lot of competition on the first team, are hitting like, well…like it’s spring training. And maybe that’s the problem. There’s pretty good competition on the team at every other position except those two (and center field, of course). Aikawa is lucky because the other catchers on the team hit only slightly better than Dave Watkins does, and Tanaka is the Golden Boy, so his inclusion in the starting lineup is nearly guaranteed. I’m not really that worried about Tanaka, but Aikawa’s hitting scares me. We’ve had such bad luck with catchers since Furuta moved to the broadcast booth that I can’t help but allow a little bit of pessimism to creep into my thinking about the situation. Hopefully he can turn things around once the season gets started in a little over a week’s time.
About Christopher Pellegrini
