Every Year is Golden Year in Chiba
Our Marines continued their run of strong play in June this week, taking both sides of a 2-game set at the ‘Zo with the last place Rakuten Eagles1. Those results guarantee a winning record for the month – the team is currently at 13-7 with just two games to play this weekend. Here’s a few …
Our Marines have now faced all five of their Pacific League foes, coming out of the first stretch of the season at 8-5-1. Lotte has three series wins, one series tie, and one series loss in the first go around. That one and only series loss came at the claws of the Seibu Lions just …
I have no voice, nothing left in me at all right now. But I must tell you this, fellow traveller in Lotte fandom – Our beloved Marines sent Nippon Hamu to an early bedtime on this Monday with a tense, thrilling 2-1 win in Sapporo. The streak of first round victories in the playoffs is intact, the Golden Year dream lives on. It’s a wonderful day to be a Lotte supporter.
Our Marines have dropped four of their last ten since we last checked in at the ten game mark.
Another boost for Our Marines came off the field with free agent signing Alfredo Despaigne earlier in the week. We’re four games out of the post-season heading into this weekend. Maybe the slugger from Cuba is just the man we need to help us catch the 3rd place Fighters, but first we must get past the 4th place Lions. That brings us to this weekend’s rival series with the Lions at the Seibu Dome. The Lions jumped a half game in front of us on Wednesday, but this weekend we have the chance to leap frog them back into 4th place before Despaigne’s debut. We’re not going anywhere though without some more reliable pitching, perhaps the potential returns of Wakui and/or Naruse this weekend can provide that. Fingers crossed.
As much as I enjoy interleague play, the passion just ain’t there for most of the series. After all, how much can you really hate a team that you see only a few times a year, and early in the season at that? Sure, there’s the Giants, but…
Even after last week’s 2-4 campaign, we are still in a tie for 2nd in the interleague top record race, only a half game behind the Chunichi Dragons. Tuesday & Wednesday’s opponent just happens to be those very Dragons. The end of this series marks the halfway point of the interleague portion of the season. We’ll have played each CL team twice. Let’s try and end this first leg with a couple of wins and get back in the first place spot.
The focus shifts to Hiroshima and the first game with the CL leading (!) Carp this year. Interleague has not been so good to Hiroshima as they dropped the first four road games before picking up a pair of wins over Seibu (yay!) this past weekend. Games with Hiroshima tend to be interesting affairs, both on the field and in the stands as the fans battle for cheer supremacy.
So it has begun. Our Marines are off and running this 2014 NPB season – a season filled with high hopes of a PL flag, if not an NPB title – and they are getting it started in the home of arguably our biggest rival, Softbank. A good start would be a very welcome sight.
The preaseason is over, the 2014 NPB regular season kicks off this Friday! Let’s take a look at the players who will be starting the season at ichi-gun for Our Marines. First, the pitchers.