7/05/09 – Hanshin (Away)
July ?th, 2009
Tokyo Yakult Swallows 1
Hanshin Tigers 4
Streak: Lost 1 Last 5: LLLWL
(Koshien)
Ishikawa was not able to get back to winning ways in this contest, and the birds lost the series against the Tigers two games to one.
Kubo pitched a decent game for Hanshin and was able to limit the Tokyo bats to only four hits and one earned run in six innings of work.
Ishikawa (7-5) had very similar numbers but only lasted four innings as he gave up four runs (three earned) 
during that relatively short space of time. He took the loss and saw his ERA balloon a bit more to 4.39.
On offense for Tokyo, only Tanaka had two hits while Aoki reached base twice via a double and a walk. Aoki crossed home plate on a Fukuchi groundout in the sixth for Tokyo’s only run of the ballgame.
Hagiwara (3.13), Oshimoto (3.20), and Lee (3.09) combined for four innings of scoreless relief.
Tokyo has Monday off before the Dragons come to town from Tuesday to Thursday, and the Baystars visit from Friday to Sunday.
Don’t be too surprised if we get swept by the Baystars, so let’s just hope that we can take two of three from third place Chunichi.
Keizo made his second costly error in two games, allowing the ball to get past him again, with the third Hanshin 4th inning run scoring as a result.
Chunichi are red hot at the moment (and now only a game behind us in 3rd), and given our impotency against the Baystars I’d expect us to be down in 3rd place come the start of next week’s round of games.
We’re still 10 games over .500 though, so hopefully we’ll get this bad run out of our system before we get down too close to that break even point.