◆ Pacific League Nippon-Ham 1-12 Seibu Lions (December 12, ES CON FIELD)

Nippon-Ham suffered a heavy defeat to Seibu Lions, failing to climb to second place for the first time since April 11. The gap between second-place and Seibu Lions widened to one game. Starter Fukushima gave up three runs in the first inning and failed to make the game runs 7 hit 6 midway through the fifth inning.

Manager Shinjo said, "Against Sumida, we gave up 3 runs in the first inning, and 6 runs by the fifth. It's impossible. Yes. It's impossible. The other day, Narama hit and we won, right? Also, KGN (Sachi Kiyomiya, Gunji, Nomura) has a .100 average against Sumida, so that's impossible too." On this day, against Sumida, the three key players—Sachi Kiyomiya, Gunji, and Nomura—were removed from the starting line-up, but they allowed a perfect pitch until two outs in the fifth inning, and the seventh inning was completely shut down with four hit and no runs.

Regarding starting pitcher Fukushima, who has given runs in two consecutive games, the manager gave a stern instruction to send him to the minor leagues for further adjustment: "I'll have him do some running drills, and work on getting his outside fastball to curve and not come inside. I'll leave that to him to figure out. Also, I'll have him train again to be able to throw strike low in the zone, so I'm removing him from the roster."