Today was game 2 of the Fighters/Marines series – wait! I forgot yesterday’s debacle. How could I?

Officially it was game 3 of the Fighters vs Marines series at stormy Chiba Marine. Lotte was looking for their first win of the season vs Nippon Ham. Watanabe Shunsuke started the game looking for his first win, though he’s had several good performances so far. He had another solid effort today, finally receiving some run support as the Marines take the 3rd game 7-3.

This game was a bit inverted from most games this season as several players who have not been nearly as productive as usual so far this season produced very nicely indeed today. Leading the Marines hit parade was captain Satozaki. Today he was 3-4 with 4 RBI including a 2-run HR in the 5th. Ohmatsu also played well, going 2-4 with a pair of RBIs including a solo shot in the 5th. Imae also got going with a 2-4, 1 RBI performance. Each of these players had been batting below .250 – in Ohmatsu’s case, he had been below .100 a week ago – and all are starting to tick the stats upwards.

There’s generally been alot of hits coming from the lineup but more often than not in the past few weeks they haven’t been strung together to bring many baserunners home. We definitely need more games like today – not just the win, but game where the team can put together more than one-run-innings and give the pitching staff some support.

There’s an off day on Thursday as everyone trickles in to the office after the long Golden Week holiday. Rakuten is in town for the weekend — that’s been a good thing for the Marines in recent year but this isn’t last year’s Rakuten. The Golden Eagles are currently leading the Pa-league (7 games up on last-place Lotte) so it should be a good fight!