Randy Messenger, making his second start since returning from the minors, worked eight innings and the Hanshin Tigers beat the Pacific League-leading Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters 1-0 in interleague play on Saturday.

Messenger (4-5), has now worked 15 scoreless innings since returning to the rotation on May 29. The right-hander allowed two hits and two walks, while striking out eight to hand Fighters ace Shohei Otani his first loss of the season.

“(My job was to) just come out and do my job, go as deep in the game as possible and give us a chance to win,” Messenger said. “I had great defense behind me.”

Before a crowd of 46,786, the biggest of the season at Hyogo Prefecture’s historic Koshien Stadium, Otani (7-1) allowed a run on four hits and three walks over seven innings, while striking out 11. With the interleague game being played at the Central League club’s home park, Otani was making a rare appearance in the batter’s box as a pitcher. He failed, however, to add to his offensive numbers this season by striking out all three times he batted against Messenger.

The game’s only score came in the fourth inning on a two-out RBI single by Hiroki Uemoto. Kohei Shibata led off and collected his second single of the game. Matt Murton singled just past first baseman Sho Nakata, who was holding the runner close to the bag.

With one out and runners on the corners, Otani struck out cleanup hitter Mauro Gomez swinging at three hard splitters. Kosuke Fukudome fouled off a 2-2 forkball before missing badly at a breaking pitch inside. Otani missed twice up in the zone with his fork against Uemoto and with the count 1-1, the Tigers’ second baseman lined the second one he saw into center.

“It seems like I’ve always been causing trouble for Randy this season, but today I was able to contribute a little,” said Uemoto.

Tigers skipper Yutaka Wada said the plan was to attack Otani’s fastball, which broke the 155-kph barrier during the game.

“We don’t have many pitchers in the CL with fastballs like his, but nevertheless we figured we’d have to do something against the fastball,” said Wada. “This was complicated because he was able to throw his forkball for strikes. So we didn’t have many chances.”

Oh Seung-hwan struck out all three batters he faced in the ninth to earn his 16th save.

“We expected a low-scoring game, but even so, he (Messenger) was superb, able to shut them down for eight innings,” Wada said. “From the first inning, he had great arm action and extension. He lost his rhythm a little in the fourth and fifth, but he pulled out all the stops in the seventh and eighth innings.”

Buffaloes 4, Dragons 0

At Nagoya Dome, Chihiro Kaneko (1-1), last season’s PL MVP and Sawamura Award winner, worked seven innings to earn his first win of the season as PL cellar dweller Orix beat Chunichi.

Lions 5, BayStars 1

At Yokohama Stadium, Seibu’s Takeya Nakamura and Ernesto Mejia hit back-to-back home runs in the second off Shoichi Ino (2-2). Mejia hit another in the seventh. Jose Lopez homered for Yokohama, while Hideto Asamura and Tomoya Mori also went deep for the Lions in a game with six solo home runs.

Swallows 9, Marines 4

At Jingu Stadium, a seven-hit, six-run sixth turned the game around in Tokyo Yakult’s win over Chiba Lotte, and Kazuhiro Hatakeyama’s solo shot put the icing on the cake in the seventh. It was his 16th homer and his fifth in four days.

Eagles 5, Carp 3

At Mazda Stadium, Zelous Wheeler delivered the big blow, a three-run homer off Hiroshima’s Kris Johnson (4-3) in the second, and Tohoku Rakuten’s Hiroyuki Fukuyama bailed out starter Kenny Ray (5-2) by getting three outs with the bases loaded in the seventh.