◆ Pacific League Rakuten Eagles Nippon-Ham (April 4th, Rakuten Eagles Mobile Saikyo Park Miyagi)

Rakuten Eagles secured a decisive victory against Nippon-Ham, extending their winning streak to two games.

Starting pitcher Ken Maeda was extremely consistent from the start. In the first inning, he got the in-form leadoff hitter Mizuno on a grounder to the pitcher, and with two outs, he swung and missed off Reyes struck out. strike He threw in the leads.

In the third inning, Nakajima’s RBI single down the right-field line and Tatsumi’s sacrifice fly provided two runs of run support, and Ken Maeda’s momentum only picked up from there. In the fourth inning, he gave up a single to left field hit—Mizuno’s first hit of the day hit—to the leadoff batter, but he remained unfazed. He got Mizutani to ground out to second double play and worked his way out of the jam.In the fifth inning, with two outs, he allowed a single to center field hit to Gunji, but got Otsuka to ground out to second . He kept the scoreboard at “0.”

Maeda Ken continued to pitch well in the middle and later innings, holding the opponent runs through eight innings with only 90 pitches. In the ninth inning, it seemed like he might achieve his first shutout game in NPB in 12 years, since August 22, 2014 against Hanshin Tigers (at Mazda Stadium) when he was with Hiroshima, but after a series of hits put runners on first and third with one out, Nomura hit a weak ground ball to the pitcher, allowing runner from third to score, giving up the first runs of the game. Manager Yoshii then came out of the dugout to signal his removal from the game, but he had pitched a season-high 8 2/3 innings, allowing only one runs, and earned his second win of the season. He made a strong impression that he had made a full recovery.