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The Swallows had their first win-less week of the season. The team’s road woes continue and the team will need to over-perform this week at Jingu. Unlike last week not many of these games felt close.

Last Week’s Games (0W 4L, 9-15 Overall, 6th in CL)

Tuesday April 24 vs. Hanshin Tigers at Matsuyama Botchan Stadium Cancelled Juri Hara was scheduled to start this game before it was called for rain. The game will be made up at Jingu in September.

Wednesday April 25 vs. Hanshin Tigers at Matsuyama Botchan Stadium 2-4 Loss David Huff pitched a second consecutive quality start going six innings and giving up two earned runs. He ran into a lot of trouble having given up seven hits and two walks. Huff didn’t get much in the way of run support as the Swallows struggled against Randy Messenger. The Swallows could only get a Coco RBI double for a lone run for Huff in the fourth. The Swallows gave the ball to Hara in the seventh to make up for his missed start the previous night. Hara struggled with his control coming out of the pen and gave up two walks that came around to score on a pair of singles later in the inning. Kazahari and Nakao pitched a scoreless inning each to end the game. The Swallows got one more run in the ninth. Matsuyama-born Atsushi Ugumori got a big pop from the crowd as he knocked in a run off of Tigers’ closer Rafael Dolis.

Saturday April 28 vs. Yomiuri Giants at Tokyo Dome 0-3 Loss David Buchanan gave up two runs in the first and that was all Tomoyuki Sugano needed to win the game. Buchanan pitched seven inning and didn’t give up any more runs but Sugano looked nothing like the pitcher the Swallows knocked around earlier in the year. Sugano pitched a complete game shutout allowing just three base runners in the form of two singles and one dropped third strike. Matt Carasiti pitched the eighth and let a run come in although it was technically unearned as he let a runner reach third on a failed pick off attempt.

Sunday April 29 vs. Yomiuri Giants at Tokyo Dome 8-11 Loss Rookie catcher Naoki Matsumoto made a start as catcher. He became the first Swallows rookie catcher to make a start for the top team since Atsuya Furuta in 1990. The Swallows took an early lead as they got three runs on a Coco homer in the first inning. Ishikawa was having control issues but finally ran into trouble in the third. He managed to give up three runs after getting two outs, including a Sakamoto solo homer. In total Ishikawa gave up two walks, a homer, a double, and a single in the inning. The Swallows got four more runs to retake the lead in the fifth inning. Ueda and Aoki lead off with back-to-back singles and Araki brought Ueda home with a single. Yamada followed with a homer for three runs. Kazahari came in relieve Ishikawa in the bottom of the fifth and gave up back-to-back solo homer to Guerrero and McGehee. After Nakao pitched a clean sixth the Swallows had a nightmare seventh inning that seemingly never ended. Kazuki Kondo started the inning of the mound and gave up Shinnosuke Abe’s first hit of the season which came with two men on and tied the game. Kondo gave up three more runs before he handed off to Carasiti who let one of his inherited runners score. Kondo was charged with six runs although only one was earned as Obiki committed an error in early in the inning. The Swallows got one run off of Giants closer Arquimedes Caminero when he uncorked a wild pitch behind Yuhei with two men on in the ninth.

Monday April 30 vs. Yomiuri Giants at Tokyo Dome 1-11 Loss The Giants completed their home sweep and extended their winning streak to eight games as the Swallows fell with minimal resistance. Shohei Tateyama struggled through four innings giving up four runs on nine hits. The Giants had big inning in the fifth getting seven runs total off of Umeno (six runs allowed with no outs recorded) and Nakazawa (one inherited run and one extra run getting all outs in the inning). Nakazawa came back in the seventh and pitched a shutout inning. Nakao and Kazahari both pitched clean innings to end the game. The only Swallows run came in the form of a Coco Balentien solo homer. Of the 11 runs the Swallows scored this week Coco batted 5 of those runs in.



Roster Moves

Due to the rain out on Tuesday the Swallows only made their roster additions on Wednesday adding Obiki, Nakazawa, and Matsumoto to the active roster.

Kotaro Yamasaki was removed from the active roster on Thursday and Umeno and Ueda were added prior to Saturday’s game.

Omura was removed to make room for Tateyama prior to today’s game.

Tateyama will likely be removed prior to tomorrow’s game.

Upcoming Games

The Swallows will play six straight games at Jingu starting with a three game set with the Dragons starting tomorrow. Then they will play the Carp from Friday. The Philly Phanatic will be a special guest tomorrow and Wednesday for some reason.

Miscellaneous

The Swallows were 10-15 at the end of April last year.

The Swallows are half a game behind the Dragons in sixth place.