Yoshio Itoi homered and Brian Sweeney pitched six effective innings Tuesday as the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters beat the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles 7-2 to stay in second place in the Pacific League.
Itoi opened the scoring with a two-run homer in the second before Eiichi Koyano and Shinji Takahashi hit back-to-back RBI hits in the third to increase the lead to 5-0 at Kleenex Stadium.
The Fighters added runs on a Jose Fernandez error in the fifth and Koyano's RBI groundout in the seventh after a two-run homer from Fernandez pulled Rakuten within three runs.
Buffaloes 6, Hawks 2
At Skymark Stadium, Ikki Shimamura hit a go-ahead single in the fourth inning and Orix went on to beat Softbank to snap its three-game losing skid.
Hiroki Kokubo and Naoyuki Omura hit back-to-back homers in the second inning for Softbank. Orix came back on a sacrifice fly by Osamu Hamanaka and an Alex Cabrera RBI single before Shimamura's one-out hit off Jeremy Powell (1-6) broke the tie.
CENTRAL LEAGUE
Carp 6, Tigers 1
At Kyocera Dome, Shigenobu Shima went 3-for-4 to lead a 16-hit attack and Kenta Maeda got his first win since June 29, lifting Hiroshima over Central League-leading Hanshin.
Hiroshima got on the board in the first inning on a fielder's choice grounder by Kenta Kurihara and made it 2-0 in the sixth on a Tetsuya Kokubo RBI single. Shima then hit a two-run single in a four-run seventh, which also included a Yoshiyuki Ishihara two-run double, after a Tomoaki Kanemoto homer cut the lead to a run.
