Tadahito Iguchi hit a tiebreaking sacrifice fly in the fifth inning, Yuki Karakawa limited the damage to one run in six frames and the Chiba Lotte Marines held off the Seibu Lions 2-1 on Tuesday night.
Takeya Nakamura hit his Japanese-baseball leading 25th home run in the fourth inning before Toshiaki Imae singled in the tying run in the bottom half at QVC Marine Field.
Masato Watanabe singled leading off the fifth and Iguchi knocked in the go-ahead run with one out.
Yoshifumi Okada had reached when Fumiya Nishiguchi (3-5) threw wildly to first after fielding Okada's sacrifice bunt, placing runners at first and second before Shota Ishimine's sac bunt advanced the runners to second and third to set the stage for Iguchi.
Karakawa (8-2) yielded six hits, struck out five and walked three in a 124-pitch outing.
Hawks 6, Eagles 0
At Sendai's Kleenex Stadium, D.J. Houlton threw seven shutout innings and Nobuhiko Matsunaka and Hidenori Tanoue homered in a five-run sixth for Fukuoka Softbank.
Matsunaka opened the scoring with an RBI single in the first and added a solo shot in the sixth, which featured Tanoue's three-run blast.
Houlton (10-3) held Rakuten hitless through six frames and allowed just one hit with three strikeouts and three walks.
Fighters 1, Buffaloes 1
CENTRAL LEAGUE
Tigers 2, Giants 1
At Nishinomiya's Koshien Stadium, Craig Brazell and Takahiro Arai hit back-to-back RBI singles to overturn a 1-0 deficit as Hanshin rallied past Yomiuri, which saw its winning streak snapped at three games.
Hisayoshi Chono gave the Giants a 1-0 lead with his homer with two outs in the first but Hanshin rapped out four hits off Seth Greisinger (1-4) to take the lead in the sixth.
Jason Standridge (6-2) threw one-run ball over eight innings for Hanshin.
Carps 6 BayStars 5
Swallows 6, Dragons 4
