September 26
th, 2009
Tokyo Yakult Swallows 5
Streak: Won 4 Last 5: LWWWW
(Jingu Stadium)
A crazy thing happened today. The Tokyo Swallows reclaimed third place in the Central League.
Tokyo’s lineup:
1. Fukuchi (LF)
2. Tanaka (2B)
3. Miyamoto (SS)
4. Aoki (CF)
5. Hatakeyama (1B)
6. Guiel (RF)
7. Yoshimoto (3B)
8. Aikawa (C)
9. Muranaka (P)
First of all, I’d like to apologize for saying in an earlier post that Muranaka should be kept off the mound. He was absolutely wonderful for the better part of eight innings. In fact, he was perfect through four and two-thirds, and had a no hitter going through a full five. Muranaka incurred 
damage in only two innings, the sixth and the ninth. In every other inning, he was unhittable.
In the sixth inning, a leadoff single by Takeyama would end up costing him a run when Fujita tripled. But by that time, the birds had already posted two runs on the board.
The scoring started in the second inning when Aoki and Hatakeyama’s back-to-back singles with no outs set the table for Guiel who singled to center. Both Aoki and Hatakeyama scored on the play. 2-0 Tokyo.
Unfortunately, Takada killed the rally by having Yoshimoto ‘tak’ bunt. Guiel moved over to second, but that was where he stayed because the subsequent batters were Aikawa and the pitcher, Muranaka.
After Yokohama grabbed that one run back in the sixth, Tokyo posted two more in the seventh. Aikawa doubled to score Guiel from second with one out, and a two out error at shortstop later allowed another run to cross home plate to make it 4-1 birds.
Hatakeyama would then add Tokyo’s final run in the bottom of the eighth when he homered to left off of Yokohama reliever, Takamiya. 5-1 Tokyo.
And everything looked like a done deal after that, but Muranaka couldn’t seal the deal and gave up two quick runs when Kinjoh singled and then Uchikawa homered to left to make things interesting at 5-3 Swallows.
Takada hooked Muranaka at that point and brought Lim in to pitch instead. There were very mixed reactions to that decision from the folks in the stands, and Lim justified the pessimism by giving up a solo home run to Murata on his second pitch. 5-4 Tokyo.
By that point, news had already flashed on the board that Chunichi had come from behind to beat the Tigers in Nagoya, so people started packing up assuming the worst. But Lim held on. He got Saeki to strike out swinging, and Yoshimura grounded out to second to end the game.
That earned Lim his 26th save of the season (2.03 ERA), and Muranaka his first win (1-5, 6.81).
Aside from that final inning, Muranaka was the pitcher that we’ve all hoped he would be this year. I’d say that he definitely earned himself another start. He recorded nine strikeouts and gave up only one walk. Nice nice!
Observations:
- Miyamoto went 0-4 and struck out every time he stood in the batter’s box.
- Hatakeyama went 1-4 with a home run (his fourth of the year) and one rbi.
- Aoki and Guiel had two hits each.
- The birds are now in sole possession of third place in the Central. They’re half a game ahead of Hanshin and three games ahead of Hiroshima.
Game three of the series starts tomorrow evening at 6 PM at Jingu Stadium.
About Christopher Pellegrini
