Week in Review: June 11 - June 17

Last week was the final week of inter-league play.  The Dragons finished up with 12-8-4 record against the Pacific League teams, good enough for 4th, behind Yomiuri, Nippon Ham and Lotte.  The Central League was much more competive this year and win-loss totals were pretty even between the leagues.  Chunichi was 3-2 last week with 3 wins against Nippon Ham and Orix sandwiched around a pretty awful series against Softbank, a team that struggled in inter-league play.  The bats remained quiet, but were good enough to pull out some close games and make it a another winning week. 
The week started with another sayonara win, Hirokazu Ibata came through with an 11th inning RBI single to give the Dragons a 1-0 win over the Fighters.  Iwata, Yamai, Sosa and Muto combined for the shutout.
Chunichi then traveled to Fukuoka for a two-game series with the Hawks and ended up leaving town with more losses than runs scored.  The Dragons dropped the first game 1-0 with Kenichi Nakata pitching an 8-inning complete game.  He's been pitching well, but hasn't been much run support of late.  Chunichi got hammered in the second game of the series, losing 8-0.
The week ended with two close wins at the Kyocera Dome against Orix.  Masahiro Araki had the big hit in the first game, a 2-RBI triple in the top of the 11th and Iwase held the lead for a 4-2 victory.  In the second game Kazuki Yoshimi returned for his first start in more than a month and provided 8 innings of 1-run pitching and Shuhei Takahashi hit his first career home run breaking a 1-1 tie in the 8th.  The final score was 3-2.

• Shinji Tajima was taken of the active roster mid-week with an arm soreness issue.
• Tony Blanco's game-tying home run on Saturday at the Kyocera Dome was a serious blast.  It looked like it made all the way up to the Dragons' cheering section in left field above the luxury boxes and well above the outfield wall.
• No games this week until Saturday when the CL season resumes against Hiroshima in Toyama.
• Masa Yamamoto is still 5th in the All-Star voting for starting pitchers though he was demoted several weeks ago and hasn't returned to ichi-gun.  I'm a little curious what will happen if he makes the team, I assume he will accept.  There some other components for picking All-Stars beyond the fan vote, so we will see if he does make it, it will be pretty funny if he does.