August 26th, 2012
Tokyo Swallows 2
Chunichi Dragons 0
Streak: Won 2 Last 5: LLLWW
(Nagoya Dome)
For the second game in a row, the Tokyo starter pitched a complete game shut-out against the Chubu newspaper smurfs.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tokyo | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | o | 2 | 6 | 0 |
| Chunichi | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| W: Muranaka (7-5) L: Yamauchi (9-5) | ||||||||||||
Both pitchers pitched extremely well today. Fortunately for the Birds, their bats came alive at the right time and did enough to earn Muranaka the win.
Tokyo | Chunichi |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ueda CF | 1 | Oshima CF |
| 2 | Morioka SS | 2 | Matsui RF |
| 3 | Milledge LF | 3 | Wada LF |
| 4 | Hatakeyama 1B | 4 | Yamasaki 1B |
| 5 | Kawabata 3B | 5 | Ibata SS |
| 6 | Tanaka 2B | 6 | Tanishige C |
| 7 | Takeuchi RF | 7 | Morino 3B |
| 8 | Kawamoto C | 8 | Araki 2B |
| 9 | Muranaka P | 9 | Yamauchi P |
For those fans who like action and more action, this was not the game for you to watch. The first three innings for both sides saw absolutely nothing happen. Both hurlers were actually perfect through 3 innings. 9 up and 9 down for both teams.
That all changed, though, when the “lucky” 4th inning came around. Ueda lead off the inning with an infield hit to short. He was then bunted over to second by Morioka. Milledge followed with a timely-hit to score Ueda and crack open the scoring. 1 – 0 Tokyo
Milledge knocks in the first run of the game.
Ueda scores the first run of the game.
The fun continued as Boo hit a single to right, which moved Milledge to third. With runners on the corners and only one out, Kawabata was up next. He hit yet another single to right easily scoring Milledge and advancing Boo one base. 2 – 0 Tokyo
The inning would end when Tanaka hit a liner to Araki and he doubled up Boo at second base.
Muranaka would walk Wada in the bottom of the 4th to lose his perfect game aspirations. However, he would keep the Chubu newspaper smurfs hitless through 6 innings of baseball. he gave up his first hit in the bottom of the 7th when Matsui hit a single to center. However, he would be erased two batters later when Yamasaki grounded into an inning ending double play. Muranaka gave up one more hit in the 8th when Ibata hit a single to right.
Muranaka came out for the ninth inning looking for his complete game shut-out. He started off by striking out the first two batters. He then got Matsui, the man who broke up his no-no, to ground out for the final out of the game. 2 – 0 Tokyo FINAL
Muranaka celebrates his complete game shut-out win.
Notes:
- Muranaka’s line: 9 innings, 112 pitches, 2 hits, 1 walk, and 6 strikeouts
- Muranaka’s hard work earned him hero honors for the day.
- 28,861 folks supposedly were admitted to this game. I say supposedly because I saw more empty seats than full ones as I viewed this game on TV.
- The Swallows are now 2.5 games back of the Carp for the third and final play-off spot.
- After a day off tomorrow, the Birds will face off against the Carp for the next 3 days at Jingu. The starters have yet to be announced but all games are scheduled to start at 6 pm.
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