Other than a late-season surge that saw the second- and third-place teams swap positions, there had not been much drama in the 2024 Pacific League pennant race - the Hawks went essentially wire-to-wire to run away from the PL pack, and the top three had been more or less decided by the 100-game mark. With the daunting task of upending the Hawks as a "reward", the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters Tigers (75-60-8) and the Chiba Lotte Marines (71-66-6) meet as ES CON Field in Hokkaido. The Fighters will enter the Series as heavy favorites, with both home-field advantage and an 18-6 record of regular-season dominance over the Marines . . .
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| ES CON Field |
The Fighters knew they might face an uphill task in the opener, with Sasaki on the hill for the Marines. And a struggle it was in the early going, as they failed to register a hit until Franmil Reyes singled to right with one out in the 4th. But Katoh was almost as stingy on the other side - the Marines got two 1st-inning singles, but did not cash in and Katoh seemed to get better as the game wore on. A leadoff single by Reyes in the 7th, followed by a Yuya Gunji sacrifice, put a runner on second with one away for the Fighters in the 7th but Sasaki whiffed Daigo Kamikawabata and retired Chusei Mannami on a shallow fly to left. The game went to the 8th inning scoreless, and Katoh retired the first two Marines in the top of the inning before Yudai Fujioka grounded a base hit through the right side. Hiromi Oka was next, and he powered a line drive into the left-center field gap for a double; Fuijoka came all of the way around and Lotte had put the first run of the game on the board with only six outs left for the home side. Sasaki dealt right through to the end, retiring the final nine Fighters, four of them via the strikeout, to polish off a sterling two-hit shutout victory. Marines 1-8-0, Fighters 0-2-0. [scoresheet]
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| Roki Sasaki shuts out the Fighters on two hits, with eight strikeouts |
The action got underway a bit earlier in Game Two, as the Marines conjured up a run off of Kanemura in the 3rd - Atsuki Tomosugi singled to lead off, stole second, moved to third on Fujioka's base hit and scored on Katsuya Kakunaka's single to left field. But the Fighters would respond quickly, plating their first runs of the Series in the bottom half of the inning. Go Matsumoto started the Hokkaido 3rd with a single and Kotaro Kiyomiya doubled him to third base. Shun Mizutani followed them with an RBI single and Reyes scratched out his second infield hit of the Series to score Kiyomiya with a second run and give the Fighters their first lead. This outburst of scoring activity did not last, however, as the two starters knuckled down to business and held the line from there. In the 7th, the Marines got a leadoff hit and a sacrifice to threaten, but Kanemura fanned Tomosugi and Kyota Fujiwara tapped out to first; in the bottom half, the Fighters used a Matsumoto single and stolen base plus a groundout to put a runner at third base with only one gone, but Ojima forced Mizutani to pop up into shallow left and then blew a third strike past Reyes. Off of this high point in momentum, the Marines iced the Series in the top of the 8th. With Takahide Ikeda on the hill for the Fighters, Oka led off with a triple to center, and Fujioka walked. Kakunaka singled home the tying run and Neftali Soto followed him with a titanic homer to right field that cleared the bases and gave the visitors a 5-2 lead. The Fighters had nothing left - they got a one-out base hit from Yua Tamiya in the 8th but were otherwise powerless as Rikuto Yokoyama and Naoya Masuda took care of business in the final two innings, and the Marines had booked their Final Stage tickets for the PayPay Dome in Fukuoka. Marines 5-8-0, Tigers 2-10-0. [scoresheet]
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| Neftali Soto hits a dramatic three-run homer to propel Lotte into the Final Stage |
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