The Hanshin Tigers, who won the Japan Series last year, are in the bottom half of the standings at the start of the season. Their No. 4 hitter, Yusuke Oyama, has been struggling.
Hanshin suffered a 0-1 shutout loss against the Hiroshima Carp at Koshien Stadium on Nov. 11. The team dropped to fifth place with five wins and seven losses.
Hanshin failed to score a run on four hits and a walk on the day. Yuki Nishi, a veteran with 118 career wins, started the game and threw 120 pitches in eight innings, allowing five runs on five hits with six strikeouts and no walks, but was left without a win. Guerra’s RBI triple with two outs in the ninth inning cost him the game.
According to Japanese media outlet Full Count, 스포츠토토 “Hanshin’s team batting average is 2-for-1.8, which is last in the league. The batting lineup is not functioning properly, and No. 4 hitter Yusuke Oyama is in trouble.”
Oyama was hit by a pitch with two outs in the first inning that was hit well into the left-field corner. He led off the fourth inning with a single to right field.
In the sixth inning, he was stranded at second and third without even swinging at a pitch.
Trailing 0-1 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, he struck out swinging on a one-bound forkball to end the game.
Oyama led Hanshin to its first Japanese Series title in 38 years last year. Oyama played in the No. 4 spot in all 143 games last year, batting .288 with 19 home runs and 78 RBIs as the team’s center fielder. He also drew a league-high 99 walks and led the league in on-base percentage (.403).
This season, however, he got off to a rough start. In 12 games, he is batting just 1-for-18 (8-for-44). He’s batting fourth and has just two hits, no home runs yet, and only one long ball. He has four walks, nearly cutting his walk rate in half from 1-for-5 last year to 1-for-8 this year. Instead, he has struck out a league-high 18 times, including 11 times in his last five games. He’s gone from strikeout king to strikeout king.
Hanshin won the Japan Series last year, 슬롯사이트 순위 defeating the Orix Buffaloes 7-1 in Game 7 to win the series 4-3. It was the second Japan Series title in 38 years for the franchise, which won its first in 1985.
In 2005, they won the Central League title and advanced to the Nippon Series, but were swept in four games by the Chiba Lotte Marines. Then-manager Akinobu Okada led Hanshin back to the Nippon Series for the first time in 18 years.