Yu Darvish tied a season high with 12 strikeouts and Makoto Kaneko delivered a tiebreaking single in the eighth inning as the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters beat the Saitama Seibu Lions 3-2 on Friday.
Darvish (14-4) became Nippon Professional Baseball's first 14-game winner this year after holding the Lions to two runs and five hits in eight innings at Sapporo Dome.
The Fighters won for the fifth time in six games and extended their Pacific League lead to six games over the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks.
Yoshihito Ishii and Takahiko G.G. Sato hit consecutive RBI singles off Darvish to put Seibu up 2-1 in the seventh.