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The story
In Central League action on August 20, the Hiroshima Carp scored a walk-off win over the Chunichi Dragons, sweeping the three-game series 3-0. Chunichi’s loss — their fourth straight — came with a wild pitch from Abreu factored in. Over on 5channel (Japan’s largest anonymous forum), the Dragons’ slump became the talk of the thread, with posters slinging nicknames like “Zombie” and “Chuni-dora.” Commenters also traded plenty of opinions on managerial decisions and roster depth.
Chunichi 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 |1
Hiroshima 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1X |2
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Source: nikkansports.com / Original article here
What people said
Well, for what it's worth, the players under a cloud (Japanese shorthand for someone suspected of wrongdoing but not formally charged) have been pulled off the first team now…
About the only pattern they've got left is a walk-off balk, innit
Didn't that already happen back in the Tatsu era? (nickname for former manager Kazuyoshi Tatsunami)
Well, they've dropped 3 straight to the one team they absolutely can't afford to lose to.
→ "The dinosaur awakens! Our real fight starts now!!!"
And then
→ L-W-L-L-L-W-L-L-L-L, 2 wins, 8 losses
What is that, a rapid-express train that's only fast for one stretch? (a jab comparing the streak to a train that runs "rapid" briefly before reverting to a local, all-stops crawl)
Honestly feels like watching a bait-and-switch ad game (Japanese gaming slang for a title whose ads oversell a much worse actual product)
With runners on first and third in a walk-off situation, the runner can advance to second for free since there's no force play to worry about — so you might as well try a delayed steal, which means sending in the pinch runner.
After the steal lands, ideally Sasaki gets a hit to seal it, but if they issue a declared intentional walk (Japan's version of an automatic IBB) to load the bases, then pinch-hit Akiyama.
With Akiyama up, the opposing pitcher's already rattled, so maybe he draws a walk.
That's probably the Carp bench's thinking.
Abreu's Dominican too, though.
Just to be clear, that was about the Carp.
Dragons, hang in there next season!
Chunichi had the best run in franchise history back in the 2000s though, that was their golden era.
Hiroshima's players are the zombies, but for Chunichi it's the manager who's the zombie.
Inoue's results should've gotten him fired ages ago, and yet he just keeps managing on like the undead.
Nope.
A rotting corpse.
Background and Key Points
Chunichi Dragons are one of NPB’s most storied Central League franchises, with a championship as recently as 2004 and their last pennant in 2011, but the club has been a perennial also-ran through most of the 2010s and 2020s, repeatedly finishing at or near the bottom of the six-team, no-wildcard Central League table. Hiroshima’s “zombie” tag in the thread refers to the Carp playing without several regulars — posters note that players “under a cloud” (suspected of, but not charged with, some off-field wrongdoing) have been pulled from the first team, so Hiroshima is running out a depleted, patchwork lineup and still finding ways to win, including this walk-off.
The thread’s real fault line isn’t whether Chunichi are bad — that’s assumed — but why: some posters treat it as a temporary funk (pointing to last year’s surprise first-place run and this year’s brief five-game streak), while others argue it’s structural, blaming manager Inoue directly and saying he should have been dismissed already. A smaller, more technical argument breaks out over the walk-off itself: whether pinch-running for Montero was correct given NPB’s runners-on-corners “free” advance to second and the specific sequencing (steal, then a possible declared intentional walk to load the bases before pinch-hitting Akiyama).
What outside readers may miss is that NPB’s declared/automatic intentional walk (introduced 2018) lets a team put a batter on without four pitches — the strategic chess posters describe hinges entirely on that rule, which has no equivalent in most leagues fans might be picturing.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geisports Sokuho+) thread “[Baseball] Central League: Carp 2, Dragons 1 [8/20] — Carp sweep series 3-0 with walk-off win, Chunichi’s Abreu wild-pitches his way into a 4th straight loss.”
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