Tokyo Yakult Swallows 6

Chunichi Dragons 3

Streak: Won 1 Last 5: W
(Chatan)

The NPB pre-season games kicked off today, and not a moment too soon for many of us! Tokyo’s first game of the pre-season schedule, which stretches until March 29th, was against the Chunichi Dragons.

As is often the case in pre-season games, a lot of players made an appearance today. With the bat, Aaron Guiel, Yasushi Iihara and Ryuji Miyade had multi-hit games. Iihara and Miyade both had three hits each while notching one and two rbi’s, respectively (Miyade had rbi singles in both the 2nd and 6th innings). Both Tsuyoshi Ueda and Yuuichi Matsumoto hit home runs.

On the mound, Shouhei Tateyama started and was credited with the win on two innings of work.

He was followed by Shun Takaichi who pitched four innings (three strikeouts). Chunichi scored one run in the sixth, but Takaichi was not tagged with that run.

Chang-yong Lim came on for the first two outs of the seventh, and Takashi Maruyama was brought on for the last out of that frame.

Takehiko Oshimoto gave up a two run homer during his 17-pitch eighth inning.

Kenichi Matsuoka pitched, and closed out, the ninth without allowing any more runs to score. He was credited with a save.

Bright spots for Chunichi included Fujii who had three singles and played all three positions in the outfield. Also, Nishikawa had a pinch hit two-run homer off of Oshimoto in the eighth. Chunichi starter, Kawai, gave up one run in five innings of work while taking the loss.

Tokyo’s next pre-season game is tomorrow versus Yokohama down on one of this archipelago’s warmer islands.