Tyrone Woods hit two of his team's four home runs to provide the brunt of run support for Kenshin Kawakami's shaky outing Thursday as the front-running Chunichi Dragons beat the Yokohama BayStars 9-7 in the Central League.
Woods got Chunichi on the board with a two-run blast in the first and Kazuki Inoue and Masahiko Morino each homered, helping to make it 6-0 through the third at Yokohama Stadium.
Kawakami (12-2) was charged with five runs in eight sub-par innings but struck out 14 batters and posted his career 1,000th strikeout in the fourth against Katsuaki Furuki.
After Yokohama cut its deficit to 6-5 on Shinji Niinuma's two run drive in the fifth and a Tatsuhiko Kinjo three-run shot in the seventh, Chunichi pulled away with Masahiro Araki's second run-scoring double and Woods's two-run blast in the ninth.