August 13th, 2009
Tokyo Yakult Swallows 2
Streak: Lost 2 Last 5: LLWLL
(Jingu Stadium)
Wow. That was embarrassing.
Tokyo’s lineup:
1. Fukuchi (LF)
2. Tanaka (2B)
3. Aoki (CF)
4. Hatakeyama (1B)
5. Guiel (RF)
6. Miyamoto (3B)
7. Aikawa (C)
8. Kawashima (SS)
9. Takaichi (P)
A lot of things went wrong tonight. The first bad decision was made by whoever thought that Takaichi was ready to start a game on the first team. He wasn’t exactly effective when he was up on the first team earlier this year, hence his three month visit to the farm team for “readjustment”, and in 12 appearances in the minors his ERA is over four and a half. By my calculations, that works out to somewhere between a 6-7.00 ERA in the pros.
And to make room for him, Nakao was dropped. The poor kid was called up so that he could get precisely 
two at-bats in two very critical late-game situations, which it’s probably safe to say he wasn’t prepared for, and then sees his shot go up in smoke after only a week on the top team. Today’s game would have been the perfect opportunity for him to get some game time in. In short, what was the point of bringing him up to begin with?
Another thing that hurt was the fact that D’Antona’s injury is serious enough that he has been dropped as well (which essentially means that he’s on the DL). Could this mean that Barrett will get another shot at the top team?
Anyways, let me briefly describe the damage visited on us by the hot-hitting BayStars.
I think it’s easiest to sum up if we look at the pitchers that made appearances today:
Inning(s) – Pitcher – (ERA) – earned runs
1.1 Takaichi (9.64) 4
1.2 – 5 Hagiwara (4.71) 3
6 Lee (4.13) 3
7 Oshimoto (3.00)
8 – 9 Kamada (5.14) 3
[Note: 1.1 equals 1 and 1/3 innings]
There. I think that pretty well sums it up.
The BayStars pounded out 21 hits and looked like a club with a lot of depth today. Even guys with sub-.200 averages were hitting home runs (i.e. Yamazaki and his three run dinger in the ninth), and Yokohama’s starter, Miura, had himself a nice little RBI single in the second.
The Tokyo bats, on the other hand, were kept very, very quiet by Miura despite the two fielding errors committed by Yokohama.
In fact, the only time Tokyo was able to score in this contest was on plays connected to fielding errors. It was pretty weak all around.
Kawashima had a great day at the plate, going 3-4, and Aoki also contributed a pair of singles, but no other starter was able to get a clean hit off of Miura.
All in all, Tokyo was absolutely destroyed by the BayStars, and they lost yet another series against the sixth-place team.
Takada continues to treat these games as though they’re “friendlies” or something and he loves to try out players whom he has recently promoted. The major problem here, of course, is that we have not been able to beat the BayStars this season, so it doesn’t really matter what place in the standings they occupy. Wouldn’t it have been better to bring Takaichi in as a middle reliever after Muranaka started throwing meatballs?
The Swallows better figure something out quickly because they are now off to Nagoya to take on the in-form Dragons this weekend.
The way Tokyo is playing right now, this could definitely be ugly.
About Christopher Pellegrini
