Every Year is Golden Year in Chiba
The Men From Makuhari headed to Kansai this week for the first series of the year vs the suddenly strong Buffaloes, winners of 5 straight coming in. But after receiving a beating at the hands of second place Orix in game 1, Lotte rallied to take games two and three to win their second series …
That’s right, folks – our buddy Mr Yuk has made his first (and hopefully last) appearance of 2017, and for games 6 & 7 to boot. Why? For all the progress Our Marines displayed in the last two games of the Fighters series, the offense looked every bit as terrible as it did in the …
Preseason action for Our Marines could not have gone better, as Chiba out-pitched and out-hit everyone en route to the first open-sen first place finish in 25 years. The pitchers that made the opening day roster ended that preseason action with a combined sub-1.00 ERA, superb even by my rosy predictions. That success didn’t translate …
The 2017 Chiba Lotte Marines season is about to get underway – time for us to take a look at how Itoh-kantoku’s guys are shaping up. I can hear your comments already – “Steve, isn’t it cheating to write a season preview after the first week of the season has already been played?” I must admit …
The 2016 version of Our Marines aren’t going anywhere – for now, at least. As of this writing Chiba sits 9.5 games behind Hamu in second and 8 up on Rakuten in fourth with just 18 games to go. To my mind, that’s the very definition of “stuck in place”. Fortunately that is a good …
Remember when the bullpen was the one constant we could always rely on to step up even when the starting pitching was, er, less than ideal? That’s (generally) still the case, but, my caveat is important. Of the four Lotte losses since the end of interleague, 3 of them are directly the result of middle …
Our annual sojourn into the unknown wilderness of the Central League is complete. It’s time to take care of essential business – beating up on the rest of the Pacific League. First up, our eternal rivals from the other side of town, Seibu. Lotte @ Seibu, 24 June Lotte 7, Lions 6 WP: Ayumu Ishikawa …
Our Marines ended the week an even 3-3, still snugly sitting 2.5 games behind PL leaders Daiei and 1.5 up on 3rd place Hamu. Seibu @ Lotte, 17 May Lotte 5, Seibu 2 WP: Ayumu Ishikawa S: Yuji Nishino LP: Isamu Satoh Notables: Hosoya (KEI!) 2 RBI, Despaigne 2 RBI Seibu @ Lotte, 18 May Lotte …
This week in Lotteland began with a well-pitched, strategic, tight loss on the road to hated Daiei and step-by-step devolved into a jamboree of ecstatic pinstriped gents dancing across the plated. Or is that evolved? Regardless, it was one hell of an interesting week. Daiei Game 1 Mr Hard Luck Loss Ayumu Ishikawa vs Rick …
The 2016 version of Our Marines is nothing if not an exciting bunch. As I mentioned in the last post, this week started out pretty terribly before turning into something wonderful, and the exact same thing could be said of the recently concluded 3-game home set with the Buffs. Let’s take a deeper look. Orix …