◆ Tanizawa questions the pitching change: "The left-handed hitters are coming up again..."

Nippon-Ham suffered a crushing 0-8 defeat against Softbank Hawks on the 21st. This brings their season record against SoftBank to 1 win and 10 losses.

On the Fuji TV ONE program "Pro baseball News 2026" aired on the 21st, commentator Kenichi Tanizawa pointed out, "Nippon-Ham has quite a few starter. In fact, Softbank Hawks has fewer, with pitchers frequently moving between the first and second teams. However, when it comes to hitting, they can't seem closer Softbank Hawks lineup, and they're also making mistakes. I wonder what's going on." MC Tsutomu Iwamoto responded, "I've been wondering why they haven't been using some promising left-handed pitcher from the opening series. This time it looked like they were using pitcher with little data, but they've been using right-handed, right-handed, right-handed pitchers in the opening series as well. How about taking a bold step and using some promising left-handed pitcher against Softbank Hawks?"

Furthermore, when Tanizawa questioned the pitching changes that day, saying, "Mizuki Hori was taken out midway through the inning, wasn't he? Hori is in pretty good form, too. They replaced two pitchers when the left-handed lineup was coming up one after another. They could have let him pitch multiple innings," Iwamoto replied, "That's true, it was still early in the inning. But I think they decided to make a change because it was a tense mound," and added, "They have some pretty good left-handed starter, so I hope they can turn their win-loss record around a bit."

☆ Cooperation: Fuji TV ONE "Professional baseball News 2026"