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Series Roundup: Eagles at Marines

What had the chance to be a sweep quickly crumbled to a two games to one series loss, which this team simply cannot afford at this point in the season.

Game one saw Mr. Hyde make an appearance. Rasner pitched his best game of the season, throwing one-hit ball over seven innings en route to a 4-0 victory.

The middle frame of the series saw Kohei Hasebe take the mound. With the Eagles protecting a slim 2-1 lead, the lefty uncorked a wild pitch that scored not one, but two Lotte runners. Rakuten never recovered from that blunder, dropping the game 3-2.

Rakuten looked to salvage a series victory on Sunday, and with Masahiro Tanaka taking the mound optimism was high. The Eagles managed yet again to turn victory into defeat, this time courtesy of the defense. Up 3-0 in the third inning, SS Kensuke Uchimura bobbled an easy grounder to put the leadoff batter aboard. Lotte promptly cashed in when the next batter, Yoshifumi Okada, cracked a double to right center field. The next inning Lotte would tie up the game, again due to a Rakuten error. With runners on first and second base, Kiyota hit a shot to right center, scoring Kim Tae-Kyun. RF Teppei had a chance to throw out Kiyota at second but Uchimura couldn't field the ball cleanly, causing it to skip beyond third base, allowing Ohmatsu to score as well, tying the game at three. The scorer gave Teppei the error, however I think it should've went to Uchimura. Nevertheless the game would remain deadlocked at three until the bottom of the 12th inning, where Imae smashed a 3-run Sayonara Home Run to end the game in spectacular fashion. Marines 6, Eagles 3.

As I said at the top, Rakuten had the chance to sweep this series yet they came away winning only one. This team just cannot afford to literally throw away opportunities like this. Call it bad luck, call it what you will, but it's getting to be pretty infuriating to watch this team play. It's all there on paper: solid pitching, speed, hitting, power... yet it's very rare that any of these attributes are in sync with each other. It's going to be a long October finishing out the schedule I'm afraid...

Gaijin lines and videos inside.