An in-depth look at the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, Jingu Stadium, the Central League, and Japanese Pro Baseball
Welcome to the Monday Review, in which we’ll look back at the week that was and look ahead to the week that will be. We hope a recurring weekly review column will help readers identify some trends that can’t be covered in a single game report. We’re still trying to work out the format, so [...]
October 2nd, 2011 Tokyo Swallows 4 Yokohama BayStars 3 Streak: Won 1 Last 5: WWLLW (Yokohama Stadium) After watching its young pitchers get knocked about the park for the past two days, Tokyo looked to salvage a bit of pride against the recently very feisty BayStars. Tokyo opened the scoring on a solo Hatakeyama [...]
October 1st, 2011 Tokyo Swallows 3 Yokohama BayStars 10 Streak: Lost 2 Last 5: WWWLL (Yokohama Stadium) Things were not pretty as the Swallows’ young bullpen arms were exposed to the BayStars’ bats. Akagawa seemed to have a handle of things in the early going. Even the solo homerun he gave up to Tsutsugo [...]
September 22th, 2011 Tokyo Yakult Swallows 2 Chunichi Dragons 3 Streak: Lost 2 Last 5: WWTLL (Nagoya Dome) The Swallows landed in Nagoya looking to create some distance between them and the second place Dragons. The Dragons, on the other hand, were playing their first game after learning of the impending departure of their strict [...]
September 18th, 2011 Yokohama BayStars 4 Tokyo Yakult Swallows 2 Streak: Lost 1 Last 5: WWWTL (Jingu Stadium) A ninth-inning rally wasn’t quite enough to stop the outhit Swallows from losing for the first time since September 4th and closing their longest unbeaten streak in over a year. Masubuchi started off fairly well. Three strike-outs [...]
The birds made a few new acquisitions back on the 29th of October, and at least one of those picks (a left-handed pitcher out of the industrial leagues) looks like he could make an immediate contribution to the team. The Swallows were part of that huge scrum looking to snap up Yusei Kikuchi, but they [...]
