After a hard-fought weekend of Nippon Professional Baseball postseason action, the championship rounds in both the Pacific and Central Leagues are set. The higher seeds prevailed in each league, with the Hokkaido Nipponham Fighters and Yokohama DeNA BayStars completing sweeps over the Orix Buffaloes and Yomiuri Giants, respectively. Let’s get into the highlights.
(3) Orix Buffaloes @ (2) Nipponham Fighters
Two of the PL’s top five pitchers by ERA squared off in Game 2, with Koki Kitayama aiming to close out the series for Nipponham while Hiroya Miyagi was tasked with keeping Orix’s season alive. Things got wild early as Yutaro Sugimoto put the Buffaloes on the board with a solo homer in the second, only for Shun Mizutani to tie it up with an RBI single in the bottom half. In the third, Kotaro Kurebayashi launched a three-run blast to make it 4-1 Orix, but Kotaro Kiyomiya quickly responded with a two-run triple in the bottom half to bring the Fighters back within one.
Kitayama went four innings, while Miyagi was surprisingly lifted after just three, giving way to Allen Kuri, making his first relief appearance of the year despite being slated to start a potential Game 3. Both teams held firm until the bottom of the eighth, when Mannami and Kota Yazawa sparked a two-out rally. Franmil Reyes then turned the game on its head, ripping a clutch two-run double off the right-field wall to give the Fighters a 5-4 lead.
Saito shut the door again in the ninth, punching Nipponham’s ticket to Fukuoka for a rematch of last year’s League Championship Series with the pennant-winning SoftBank Hawks.
(3) Yomiuri Giants @ (2) DeNA BayStars
Game 1 saw DeNA’s Anthony Kay, coming off a season in which he posted the lowest ERA by a starting pitcher in franchise history at 1.74, against Yomiuri’s Iori Yamasaki. Yoshitomo Tsutsugo set the tone early with a solo home run in the second inning before Tatsuo Ebina and Tsutsugo again extended the lead to 3-0 by the third. Yomiuri fought back in the fourth on a two-run homer from Gakuto Wakabayashi, but Tsutsugo struck once more in the sixth with his second long ball of the day to make it 4-2.
Kay delivered a big game performance, tossing seven innings of two-hit, two-run ball with eight strikeouts on 118 pitches. Yamasaki battled through six innings with six strikeouts but allowed four runs. The BayStars padded their lead in the eighth off reliever Kota Nakagawa, which included Tsutsugo’s fourth hit of the game, as DeNA cruised to a 6-2 victory.
The second game began in chaos as the Giants exploded for five runs in the first inning against Andre Jackson, capped by home runs from Shunsuke Sasaki and Raito Nakayama. But DeNA immediately countered with a five-run frame of their own, highlighted by Keita Sano’s two-run blast and Taiki Ishikami’s three-run shot off Shosei Togo. The bullpens quickly took over, with Yutaro Ishida tossing four scoreless innings for DeNA, and neither side scoring again through nine innings.
In extras, Yomiuri took a 6-5 lead in the top of the 11th on Sasaki’s infield RBI single, but their failure to add on with the bases loaded proved costly. Down to their final out, Ishikami reached base and stole second before Takuma Hayashi tied the game with a single. Ryuki Watarai followed with a pinch-hit single, and Tatsuo Ebina delivered the walk-off hit to left, completing a thrilling 7-6 comeback that sent the defending champs back to the Final Stage to take on the first-place Hanshin Tigers.
Both the Pacific League and Central League Championship Series are set to begin on Wednesday, October 15, with the SoftBank Hawks and Hanshin Tigers each starting with an automatic 1-0 advantage.
