Andy Phillips hit a go-ahead RBI single in the top of the 10th inning as the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles edged the Hiroshima Carp 8-7 on Friday.
Teppei Tsuchiya led off the 10th with a single, moved to second on a Norihiro Nakamura groundout and scored on Phillips' one-out single to center off Ryuji Yokoyama in an interleague game at Mazda Stadium.
Yusuke Inoue (1-0) won in relief. Hiroki Yamamura pitched the 10th for his first save since 2007.
Takeshi Yamasaki hit a pinch-hit, grand slam to push Rakuten's lead to 7-2 in the sixth.
But the Carp came back to score five runs between the sixth and eighth, capped by a pinch-hit RBI triple from Jun Hirose.
Phillips hit a solo home run in the second and Norihiro Nakamura also went deep with a two-run blast in the third.
Kenta Kurihara went 2-for-4 with an RBI in his ninth straight multiple-hit game for Hiroshima, which has dropped three in a row.
