Giants’ Lineup Gets Shut Down by DeNA’s Baba — 5ch: “Only the Giants Get Shut Down by Baba”

Background and Key Points

The Yomiuri Giants are Japan’s most storied and highest-profile NPB franchise, and any road loss to the Yokohama DeNA BayStars draws outsized reaction because the two sit in the same Central League and Yokohama Stadium games are treated as measuring-stick contests. The thread comes from a live-reaction (“jikkyō”) thread on 5ch, numbered “Giants Acting Manager 108,” a running series tied to games managed not by regular skipper but by a stand-in, which is why posters keep deflecting blame back to “Abe” as the real decision-maker even when a substitute is technically in the dugout. Shortstop Izumiguchi is a relatively new starter at a position long held by Sakamoto Hayato, one of the most decorated infielders in franchise history, which explains why any defensive lapse from Izumiguchi gets compared unfavorably to his predecessor rather than judged on its own.

The thread doesn’t converge on one villain: some blame the bullpen call that brought in a wild-armed reliever after the deficit had been trimmed, others blame the bench for ordering a sacrifice bunt against a pitcher (Baba) who was already dominant, and a third group pins it on Izumiguchi’s footwork — three separate complaints about strategy, personnel, and execution that never resolve into consensus.

What outside readers may miss is that the pitch-clock and robot-umpire (ABS) comments are wishful, not descriptive — NPB had not adopted either system for these games, so the posters venting “if only we had a pitch clock” are imagining a rule change, not describing a missed violation.