The Chiba Lotte Marines (71-66-6) held the Fighters to just two runs in their First Stage two-game sweep, but now they must stare down the barrel of Nippon Professional Baseball's best offense - the regular-season Pacific League champion Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks (91-49-3) scored more than a half-run per game more than the second-highest scoring team in the league. The Hawks, the first team to win 90 games in Japan's top league since the 2017 edition of the franchise, will be very heavily favored to return to the Japan Series for the first time since winning the last of their four straight NPB titles in 2020 . . .
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| Mizuho PayPay Dome in the spotlight for the Pacific League Finals |
Unlike the strings of early zeroes that marked the Central League series, the proceedings in Fukuoka get off to a fairly early start when Gregory Polanco doubles for Lotte with one out in the 2nd and scores on a two-out single by Atsuki Tomosugi, but the home club accepts some pain to punch back hard in the 3rd. With one out, Ryoya Kurihara and Hotaka Yamakawa are drilled by Atsuki Taneichi pitches and Pacific League MVP Kensuke Kondoh then jerks a ball to right-center field that splits the outfielders and rolls to the wall for two bases and two runs. Kenta Imamiya came right behind him and laced an RBI to hit to right and the Hawks were firing on all cylinders, as Yamakawa led off the 5th with a home run and Ukyu Shuto tripled in the 6th and scored on Hikaru Kawase's infield single. Arihara was in command until the 7th, when the Marines loaded the bases with two outs, but he froze Hiromi Oka with a two-strike change-up to frustrate the visitors. Darwinzon Hernandez got into a little bit of trouble in relief in the 9th, plunking the leadoff man and then allowing a pinch-hit single to Takashi Ogino and an RBI double to Oka; this brought Roberto Osuna out of the pen to deal with the save situation and Yudai Fujioka could only sky the ball harmlessly to right field for the final out that confirmed a Hawks victory. Hawks 5-7-0, Marines 3-8-0. [scoresheet]
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| Kensuke Kondoh delivers the big hit in the series opener |
There were no early fireworks in Game Two and, in fact, there weren't many fireworks at all. Livan Moinelo retired the first nine Marines, and Yuji Nishino surrendered only two hits to the Hawks through the first five innings. The home side got two two-out singles in the 6th, but Imamiya trickled one back to the mound to put a lid on the uprising. As the empty innings mounted, a sense of desperation began to mount and it pushed the Marines into caught-stealing outs in both the 7th and 8th. When Kondoh singled to start the bottom of the 9th and was advanced to second by Imamiya's sacrifice, the Hawks were only 180 feet from seizing an irresistible 2-0 series lead; but Lotte resisted, as Rikuto Yokoyama fanned pinch-hitter Tatsuru Yanigimachi and forced Takuya Kai to pop out into foul ground behind home plate. Off to extra innings the game went, and the only threat in the early going was a single, steal and ground out in the 11th that put a Marine at third base with two outs, but Shuto Ogata struck out Tagashi Ogino to keep the game alive for the twelfth and final inning. This time, Lotte made it stick. Fujioka singled to start the inning and moved to second on Ogata's balk. Neftali Soto was pitched carefully and drew four wide ones for the second time in extra frames before Ogata was replaced by Takehiro Hasegawa with the dangerous Polanco coming to the plate. Deep into the count, he found one he liked and lined it into center for the base hit that finally broke the tie. With closer Naoya Masuda already having done two innings of duty in extra innings, Hirokazu Sawamura was asked to close the game out, and he quickly retired the first two Hawks. But Shuto singled and stole second base to give the still-dangerous Yuki Yanagita a crack at tying the game. The equally-experienced Sawamura had the upper hand in the end, though, catching Yanagita unable to pull the trigger as the final strike of the game slid over the inside corner. Lotte came into the game needing to win four of the next five, and at least they had put one into the bag. Marines 1-4-1, Hawks 0-6-1. [scoresheet]
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| Livan Moinelo pitches nine innings of one-hit ball to keep the Hawks in the game |
SoftBank got right back onto the front foot in the 2nd inning as Kondoh singled with one out, and after stealing the next base, raced home in front of Imamiya's base hit. Stewart followed that up by setting down the first two Marines in the 3rd, but things went sideways in a hurry after that. Oka doubled, Fujioka walked, Katsuya Kakunaka dumped one in front of Yanagita in right to fill the bases and Soto walked to force in a run. The weight of the situation came crashing down suddenly on Stewart when Polanco followed by crushing a pitch into the right-field stands for a grand slam home run that put the exclamation point on a five-run inning and a four-run Lotte lead. Yamakawa hit his second solo shot of the series in the 4th, but Stewart was finally run out of the game in the 6th; two singles and a Soto triple for two runs forced him from the game, and Yuki Tsumori was greeted by a Polanco RBI hit, a Toshiya Satoh double and Hisanori Yasuda's sacrifice fly that made it a 9-2 game. SoftBank would get a couple of consolation runs in the bottom of the 9th after Riku Kikuchi hit the first two men he faced on mop-up duty after Sasaki had pitched eight effective innings, but the outcome was never in doubt and the Final Stage was now level. Marines 9-11-0, Hawks 4-6-0. [scoresheet]
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| Gregory Polanco launches a grand slam to power the Marines |
The visitors had the bit between their teeth now, and got straight to work in the first at-bat as Oka doubled with one out and Soto knocked him in with a base hit to left. While Ojima was living dangerously in the early innings - the Hawks left a runner at third base in both the 2nd and 3rd - Ohzeki shook off the early score to wrap up the Marines tightly through the remainder of his seven innings of work. Imamiya doubled with one out in the SoftBank 7th, but Ojima recorded his 9th and 10th strikeouts of the game on either side of the hit, and Oka threw out the Marine shortstop at home for the final out of the inning after Shuto had welcomed reliever Shota Suzuki with a sharp single to right. Lotte were doing nothing with SoftBank pitching in the late innings, and the home team moved to the brink of a tie again in the 8th - Yanagita singled with one out, and Yamakawa doubled down the line in left with two outs but Ogina's fine play to cut the ball off at the line forced Yanagita to hold at third base. Given a reprieve, Suzuki then struck out Kondoh looking (his third consecutive whiff of the game after starting the series with six hits in thirteen at-bats) to throw a hush over the PayPay Dome, a quiet which lasted another twenty minutes while Masuda was putting their team away in order in the 9th. Marines 1-6-0, Hawks 0-7-0. [scoresheet]
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| Neftali Soto starts the scoring - and ends it - with an RBI single in the 1st |
The tension was palpable as the clubs took the field on a Sunday evening on Kyushu Island. Not only had the home team's early-series lead evaporated, it was the Hawks who were now standing with their backs pressed up tightly against the proverbial wall, needing to win the final two games to extend their season. They handed the ball and that pressure over to Ohtsu, who had pitched sparingly (although well) over the season's final two months and the 25-year-old seemed to be ready for his moment, allowing only one Lotte hit over the first six innings. Unfortunately for the Hawks and for the level of tension in the stands, his counterpart Mercedes was even better, carrying a no-hitter through four before escaping a bases-loaded trap built from a pair of walks in the 5th. The game was still without scoring incident when Soto came to the plate with two away in the top of the 7th and made the Marines' second hit of the evening a big one, over the the LF fence and into the stands for a tie-breaking homer. Despite his effectiveness thus far, Mercedes was relieved by Yokoyama to start the bottom of the inning, as Hiroki Kokubo decided to prioritize a fresh arm and multiple-times-through-the-order penalties, and it appeared as if that would be a significant instance of over-managing. Yamakawa drew a leadoff walk, Kondoh singled, and the Hawks had men at the corners with no outs and the Dome back in fine voice, but the bottom of the SoftBank order was due up so the wheels were starting to turn in their dugout. As the state of the series hung in the balance, the 24-year-old right-hander Yokoyama (who has been pitching in NPB since he was 18) reared back and fired strike three past Imamiya for the first out. Yanigimachi pinch-hit for Tomoya Masaki (0-for-13 in the series) and could only fist a tight fastball into medium-shallow center for the second, forcing Yamakawa to hold at third. Yuto Kawamura then brought a bat to the dish in place of Takuya Kai (1-for-15), and he was no match for a two-strike slider that broke down and away out of the zone for a swing and miss to end the inning. The disappointment seemed to follow the Hawks into the field for the top of the 8th, and then it deepened - with one out Hisanori Yasuda doubled, and Kazuki Sugiyama was summoned in time to fan Tomosugi. But Kyota Fujiwara then tripled out of Shuto's reach and, although Sugiyama recovered to strike out Oka, the Lotte lead had doubled with two innings to go. Yuki Kiniyoshi came in to pitch set-up in the 8th and, again, the new arm was slow to settle in. Shuto doubled to cetner as first man up before Kiniyoshi induced three straight ground balls; these ended the inning, but they also moved Shuto all the way around and brought the SoftBank deficit back to a single score. Masuda again took up the burden in the bottom of the 9th, with the heart of the Hawk hitting due up. Yamakawa grounded to third, but the irrepressible Kondoh singled to right to put the tying run on base. Imamiya skipped one down to third, but Yasuda could only convert the force at second, and the home team still had one out remaining. That chance fell to Yanigimachi and he watched it sail past him on the back of a four-seamer that painted the outside corner for a called third-strike that ended the series and sent the Marines to the Japan Series for the first time since 2010! Marines 2-4-0, Hawks 1-4-0. [scoresheet]
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| CC Mercedes throws 6 one-hit innings in the clincher |
Yes, it's a short series and there were three one-run games that could have fallen either way, but there's no angle you can view this from where it wasn't a huge upset. The Hawks were one of the best teams of recent NPB history, with the best offense and second-best run prevention in the league, while the Marines had a negative run differential for the season and stumbled to the finish to secure the final playoff place largely out of default. But Soto and Polanco showed out in the middle of the lineup (producing 16 of the 32 Lotte runs between them), Sasaki and Ojima did their thing, and the back of the bullpen was untouchable (13 ip, 8 h, 0 r). That's a pretty good recipe for short-series success which they will look to reprise in the Japan Series against the Giants. [series stats]
Kendoh (a series-leading eight hits) was the best player on the field, but he hit a short rough patch just as the Marines were imposing their will, and the Hawks didn't find a way to ride him to a victory, so the nod goes (oh so narrowly, over teammate Neftali Soto) to Marines DH Gregory Polanco (.263/.333/.474), who hit the 12th-inning game-winner in the 1-0 Game Two victory to the Marines' march back started, and delivered the most memorable single moment of the series with the grand slam that exploded Game Three and put Lotte firmly on the road towards the upset.
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