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The story
On September 22, 2026, the Giants-Hiroshima game at Mazda Stadium got off to a rough start for the Giants. In the 5ch live-thread, when reliever Funasako — who took over from starter Togo — struggled with his control and kept giving up runs, fans piled on with calls for a pitching change, like “just walk him” and “change the pitcher already, lol.” When the Giants finally tied it up in the 7th, comments of “tied it up!” brought a brief moment of calm, but debate over managerial decisions — including whether Sakamoto should have been asked to bunt — continued on.
What people said
Giants Acting Manager Thread 146
Starting Lineups
【Giants】 【Hiroshima】
8 Matsumoto 7 Sato K.
4 Yoshikawa 4 Kikuchi
6 Izumiguchi 8 Nakamura S.
3 Darbeck 3 Sakakura
2 Ohshiro 5 Sasaki
5 Sakamoto 9 Suekasa
7 Suzuki D. 2 Ishihara
9 Sasahara 6 Katsuta
1 Togo 1 Tamamura
Tied it up!
That's not what a team in a pennant race should be doing
leading to a comeback win
— baseball's not gonna be that easy
Under Hara, there were times he had Sakamoto bunt even during his 40-homer season
Context and Talking Points
At the time this thread was posted on September 22, the Central League pennant race was in its final stretch, with Hanshin running away with the title and the Giants fighting Hiroshima, DeNA, and others for second place and below. As the material linked in post 6 shows, with Hanshin’s magic number closing in, a win over Hiroshima was directly tied to the Giants’ standing in the race. The thread split over two points of debate: whether it was right to pull starter Togo early and hand the game to the bullpen, and whether Sakamoto should have been made to bunt in the traditionally sacrosanct cleanup spot. Note that the live-thread excerpts quoted here only run through the Giants tying the game in the 7th — the final result of the game is not included in this excerpt.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “Giants Acting Manager Thread 147.”
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