Every Year is Golden Year in Chiba
Our Marines went 4-1 this past week, sweeping a pair of games in the Seibu Dome and taking two of three in a home set over the Fighters. As you may recall, one Marines blogger (OK, it was me) took a positive approach toward Lotte dropping three of four the week prior to last. Well, …
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 …
A quick perusal of Tuesday’s box scores shows a 4-4 tie in Fukuoka for Our Marines. Boring game? No – FAR from it. In my opinion this was the best game of the year, and I think a good indicator of the true character of this Chiba Lotte squad. Early Innings Daiei starter Wada’s line …
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[cs_section id=”” class=” ” style=”margin: 0px; padding: 45px 0px; ” visibility=”” parallax=”false”][cs_row id=”” class=” ” style=”margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; ” visibility=”” inner_container=”true” marginless_columns=”false” bg_color=””][cs_column id=”” class=”” style=”padding: 0px; ” bg_color=”” fade=”false” fade_animation=”in” fade_animation_offset=”45px” fade_duration=”750″ type=”1/1″][cs_text id=”” class=”” style=”” text_align=””]As usual, I took a whole lotta pics at Ishigaki Spring Camp this year, and I’ve …
If you want to be totally negative, you can say the 2014 Chiba Lotte Marines’ backs are flush against the wall. The margin of error is not slim; it’s non-existent. Our Marines must win every game – 6 of them. Hamu must lose every game – 11 of those. If that happens, if these guys can pull off that miracle, Hamu collapses that badly – Chiba STILL needs help in the form of Rakuten and Seibu losing a game or two.
Yes, it’s the unlikeliest of scenarios, indeed, but until all chance is drained from the season we will cheer and cheer with ALL our zeal for Our Marines to move on.
You might think that with the generally miserable season Our Marines have had that there would be no great news to share. Au contraire, mon frere! There’s all sorts of interesting things going on, many of them quite good!
We fans should never complain when our team goes into the final game of a series with a chance for a sweep, especially versus a solid team like Orix. So even though the result in that final game feels disappointing, like an opportunity missed, we’ll be happy with taking 2 of three.
Looks like we’ve made it out of interleague alive. We finished with a 12-12 record versus the Central League, alternating wins and loss in our last 11 games. Overall, June as been a little less kind to us, with Our Marines going 6-9 so far in the month. At 31-35-1, we sit two games back of Nippon Ham for the 3rd spot in the PL. We return to the PL schedule this weekend with the first place Orix Buffaloes coming to Chiba. Orix leads SoftBank by .5 games, and is 10 games up on us.
So our last 9 games? LWLWLWLWL. Yep, that’s alternating wins and losses. This of course gets us to where we are now. 11-11 in interleague with two makeup games left. Hopefully we can finish interleague the way we started it with a sweep of the Swallows.