Every Year is Golden Year in Chiba
After dropping game 1 in Osaka Our Marines blew the doors off the best pitching staff in the PL and took the series. Who saw that coming? And which team is going to show up at QVC, that team or the team that dropped the series to the Fighters? 48 games left, 6 games out of third, if there’s going to be a run it’s gotta be now.
Break open your ledger and put Rival Series Part 1 in the books with an emphatic WIN for Our Marines. After weeks of futility, that’s 2 series wins in the last 3, and of course the one that Chiba lost could easily have swung the other way. I must say, cautiously, that things are looking up.
Despite the series loss, there’s a lot positive to take away from the Rakuten series. The team has put up 3 or more runs for 7 straight games including the pair of 7 run showings in the first two games. Katoh has been crazy good at the plate ever since being called back up, and some of the pitching was quite solid.
This series could be an interesting one as our intriguing young pitchers go all three games – Ishikawa in game 1, Karakawa in game 2, and presumably Yuta Ohmine in game 3. Let’s see if they can repeat their recent solid performances and more importantly, if the entire team can come together and bring in some Ws.
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.
A series split with Hanshin isn’t exactly convincing me to put more stock into the 2014 Marines. Putting it perspective though, it was nice to actually see Our Marines show some signs of life after the beating we took in the previous series at Yomiuri. We’re an even 8-8 in our interleague campaign, and can probably write off any dreams of catching the 12-6 CL leading Giants, or 12-6 PL leading Buffaloes. Meanwhile, the picture in the PL standings shows us four games under .500 and in fourth place.
Well, this should have been interleague series number eight. Friday and Saturday’s games got rained out though, so we’ll be making our annual trip to Jingu at the end of the interleague calendar. Unlike the Swallows, the other Tokyo club happens to have a roof over their stadium. That means Our Marines will definitely be playing baseball for the first time in four days Sunday afternoon against Yomiuri.
Our Marines head back home after a four game interleague road trip that took us to Koshien and Hiroshima. We split two games in each series, yet our 6-2 interleague record still leads NPB. The BayStars make the trip to the other side of Tokyo Bay for this weekend’s series at QVC. DeNA currently resides in the CL basement, with Seibu being the only other team in NPB with a worse record. Speaking of the standings, we start the weekend tied for 3rd in the PL with the Fighters. The Fighters and Marines have identical records, with Lotte leading the season series at 7-2. All-Star voting has commenced, the weather is warming up, and the calendar turns to June. It’s starting to feel a bit like summer, let’s hope Our Marines heat back up as well.
Interleague play started well for us and hopefully that continues against the Giants. We’re 2-0 against Tokyo teams and have a chance to make it 4-0 on Friday and Saturday. We’re riding a three game winning streak, and it seems that MAYBE things are starting to come together for Our Marines. Perhaps the everyday lineup is beginning to take shape. With the recent heroics of Ogino and Katoh, we may actually be on a path to achieving the balance of old and new that we hoped for at the beginning of the year. Cautious optimism abound.
Revenge is a dish best served cold…and windy. If there’s one thing QVC Marine Field in April elicits in most people’s minds, is the cold and wind. That makes this an appropriate time to welcome the 2013 Japan Series Champions, the Rakuten Eagles. You may recall that our 2013 campaign was halted in Sendai, in the Final Stage of the PLCS. Well, let’s give the Ma-kun-less defending champs a rude welcoming back to Chiba.