Lotte starter Yoshihisa Naruse as of late has been The Feared One. He has not been the man lurking in the shadows, sneaking up on poor, unsuspecting Pa-League batters. Oh no. He’s been the crocodile in the pond, chomping everything in sight and leaving nothing but tears and woe. Let’s look at the evidence – …
Category: game report
Soft, Creamed
*Please note for purposes of positivity that all discussion to Tuesday’s 8-4 loss to visiting Daiei will be conveniently ignored. What better to celebrate the 9th of September – 9/9/09, as it were – than to have your favorite team beat up on their opponent by 9 runs? Or at least scoring 9 runs? What’s …
Fight the Fighting Fighters!
What’s this I see? Not one, but TWO victories versus the Fighters? Indeed, what you have heard is true, as this week the first place Nippon Ham Fighters swaggered in to town but took two out of three on the chin from our plucky Marines. It is – quite obviously, as anyone who follows Lotte …
Daiei Delight
Yet again I am behind in my blogging. Who knew that going to games, coming home late at night, and working all day would leave you precious little time to blog these games? For the last week in August Daiei rumbled in to town for a series with our beloved Marines. The Hawks were on …
Good News and Bad News
I lied; there is no good news. How can there be good news when the pen blows a game to the hated Lions? The pen didn’t blow a lead, but they did blow a tie – twice – and the second time was unrecoverable as Seibu beats Lotte the second night in a row, 5-3. …
A Good Start Wasted
If I told you that Kobayashi Hiroyuki – the starter who was great prior to last year but only went 5-12 with an ERA above 5 in 2008 and is 2-9 with a 4.67 ERA in 2009 and has lost 5 of his last 6 starts – wait, that’s too long of an aside. If …
Live Blog: Lotte vs Orix, 9 August
I had made plans to go to Lotte Urawa today for the ni-gun game but changed my mind this morning. Instead, I’ll be blogging the Lotte-Orix tilt as it happens. Orix took the first game of the series on Friday 5-1, and Lotte evened the series with a big 9th inning on Saturday to win …
A Ham-Free Weekend, Part 2
The Ham-Free Weekend rolled on in utterly brilliant and heart-stopping fashion as both Saturday and Sunday’s games went all the way to the last frames as the visiting Golden Eagles of Rakuten battled our beloved Chiba Lotte Marines. In both games Lotte overcame adversity and missed opportunities only to make the game-winning play. On Saturday …
A Ham-Free Weekend, Part 1
On an unseasonably cool summer night the relief from the recent Lotte troubles showed up at Makuhari (the moon really was that beautiful tonight – that’s an actual picture from the game). Over the last three weeks Lotte has dropped 14 or 16, including 9 in a row to Nippon Ham, but tonight good ol’ …
Game Report: Fighters vs Lotte, 28 July
I took a bit of a break when the team did for the All-Star break, so everyone involved needs a bit of time to get back into the swing of things. The first game after the break started a lot like the last few games as visiting Nippon Ham jumped on Lotte starter Kobayshi in …