◆ Pacific League Rakuten Eagles Seibu Lions (25th, Rakuten Eagles Mobile Saikyo Park Miyagi)

Rakuten Eagles Eagles pitcher Kenta Maeda earned his long-awaited first win of the season with a superb performance, allowing only three hit no runs over seven innings. It was his seventh appearance on the mound. With tears in his eyes, he stood on the victory platform and said, "I've been getting so much support from the fans, but I just couldn't get a win. Today has become a very important day for me."

He got off to a strong start from the very first inning. He got the leadoff canario out with a 151 km/h fastball to fly to right, and with two outs, he swung Hasegawa at splitter struck out. It started with no runs. In the second round, Nevin took a left-front hit in the lead, but he remained unfazed. He calmly took down the trailing runners. strike Throwing in the lead, he didn't allow a single runner in the 3rd to 5th innings. He pitch a season-long 7 inning, throwing a record-high 114 pitches with just 3 hit. He also delivered a series of excellent fielding.

Overwhelmed with emotion, he ended his post-victory speech by revealing a T-shirt with his own hand-drawn illustration. "When I was in Japan, I thought it wasn't fun to just talk during hero interviews, so I started drawing pictures on T-shirts and giving one to each person in the stands. I drew one today. I'll throw it somewhere later, so please take a look," he said, delighting the crowd.