The Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks should be able to taste it now. They’ve dominated this Japan Series through three games and now the big payoff is just around the corner.
Alfredo Despaigne drove in three runs, Yurisbel Gracial homered and Rick van den Hurk did his job on the mound as the Hawks moved within one win of a three-peat with a 6-2 win over the Yomiuri Giants in Game 3 of the Japan Series on Wednesday night at Tokyo Dome.
The Hawks lead the series 3-0 and will celebrate their fifth title in six years with one more victory. They’ll go for the sweep in Game 4 on Thursday at the Big Egg.
For the Giants, Game 4 will be all about staying alive to see another day. The Kyojin can at least take solace that what they’re trying to do isn’t unprecedented. Though the last time a team rallied from 3-0 down was back in 1989, when Yomiuri took the title away from the Kintetsu Buffaloes.
That, however, would require cooling off a red-hot Hawks team that has won nine straight since opening the postseason with a loss against the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles.
Not even home runs in consecutive at-bats by Yomiuri leadoff man Yoshiyuki Kamei was enough to slow SoftBank’s march on Wednesday.
Gracial hit his second home run of the series in the top of the second. He now has four hits, two of them home runs, and three RBIs in the series.
Despaigne finished 2-for-3 with an RBI single in the third and a two-run hit in the fourth.
The fourth inning also featured a tiebreaking sacrifice fly by Yuya Hasegawa and a bases-loaded walk drawn by Yuki Yanagita.
Van den Hurk pitched four innings and allowed a pair of runs. He struck out six and walked two. He gave up both runs on solo home runs by Kamei in the first and third innings. Van den Hurk ran into trouble in the fourth, when the Giants loaded the bases with two outs. He struck out Shinnosuke Shigenobu to end the threat.
Relievers Shuta Ishikawa, Hiroshi Kaino, Livan Moinelo and closer Yuito Mori limited the Giants to two hits and walked one batter the rest of the way.
Now SoftBank is in position to end the series in just four games.
The last Japan Series sweep happened in 2005, when the Chiba Lotte Marines wiped out the Hanshin Tigers in four games. The Giants were last swept in 1990 by the Seibu Lions.
Source : Baseball – The Japan Times
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