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The story
Hanshin came from behind to beat Chunichi 4-3, snapping the Dragons’ winning streak. The go-ahead blow was Seishiro Sakamoto’s ninth home run of the season, a two-run shot in the 8th inning. On 5ch, fans lined up to praise Sakamoto’s performance, while others called it an “ugly win” built on sacrifice bunts, and some questioned Chunichi’s bullpen management and pinch-runner decisions.
Hanshin 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 ｜4
Chunichi 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 ｜3
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Source: nikkansports.com / Original article here
What people said
Doris already gives me enough scares, please stop
Chikamoto gets on → bunt him over → move him along → clutch hit
Even Tsuchida looked exasperated
That's partly because they took out one of Chunichi's batters with a hit-by-pitch yesterday
If it were a 0.5-game lead I wouldn't be sure, but at 1.5 games Hanshin's like 99.9% favored over the Giants
They've got a backlog of rained-out games piling up, so pitcher usage is gonna be brutal
Gotta be MVP of the month
Guess that's the power of one swing
No way he should join a team that wrecks pitchers like that
Well done, Sakamoto
Motoyama, Sakamoto, and Kudo are so valuable — they never get swept up in the flow of the game
Feel like I see that a lot, even rooting against him
Even Gondo looked exasperated
Exactly this
Pinch-hitting Abe was baffling too
Did they not realize he'd just get walked?
Might be time for a new manager, no?
No way we're losing two straight to the likes of Chunichi!!!!!
Uh, they'd already lost 2 straight as of yesterday??
It's been a bunch of interchangeable also-rans all year, nobody's pulling ahead of the pack
That's exactly why they've been testing guys in games against the minnows lol
"Testing" — how many times are they gonna test the same guys?
Come on
They've gotta develop players too, of course they're testing them over and over lol
They did the same thing against the minnows last year lol
One out, runners on first and second — sure, going with Fukunaga or Kanbayashi makes sense. But that's not the situation we had today
I'm talking about the fact that he'd just get intentionally walked
Probably the big three: Murakami, Saiki, and Takahashi
If they do that, every weekday but Friday turns into a full backup rotation, which isn't great
Background and Key Points
Hanshin Tigers and Chunichi Dragons are two of Japan’s oldest Central League franchises, and this Central League clash carries real pennant-race weight: the thread notes Hanshin sit roughly 1.5 games ahead of the Yomiuri Giants, a margin posters treat as near-decisive given how few games remain and how badly rain has backed up the schedule (a recurring NPB problem, since compressed makeup games strain already-thin starting rotations). Chunichi, by contrast, are cast as the league’s last-place club (“Dobegons,” a pun combining “last” and “Dragons”), which makes their win streak – and Hanshin’s relief at snapping it – notable even though they’re out of the race themselves. Fujikawa, mentioned as the closer who “keeps getting bailed out,” is Hanshin’s veteran relief ace, a former MLB pitcher now closing games in his late career.
The thread doesn’t split over whether Hanshin deserved the win – it splits over how they got it. One camp celebrates Sakamoto’s clutch homer (his ninth, floated as a Monthly MVP case); another dismisses the whole sequence as manufactured “small ball” – Chikamoto reaching base, bunting him over, advancing him, then cashing him in – calling it stylistically unsatisfying even in victory. A separate disagreement targets Chunichi’s in-game management: several posters think the decision to pinch-run for Hosokawa and pinch-hit for Abe (who, they argue, was obviously going to be walked) cost Chunichi the game, with a few going as far as suggesting the manager should be replaced.
What the thread never spells out for outsiders is that sacrifice bunting mid-game to manufacture a run, rather than just as a last-resort tactic, is standard NPB strategy, not a sign of a weak offense – the “ugly win” gripe is a stylistic complaint about conservatism, not a claim Hanshin got lucky.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geisports Sokuhō+) thread “[Baseball] Central League D 3-4 T [8/27] Hanshin’s Sakamoto hits go-ahead two-run homer (No. 9), Dragons’ comeback loss snaps win streak.”
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