Masahiro Tanaka saw his scoreless-inning streak snapped at 42, but held on to improve to 13-0 this season as the Pacific League-leading Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles beat the Orix Buffaloes 4-1 on Tuesday.
Tanaka surrendered the game's first run in the third inning at Kyocera Dome. Shunta Goto led off with a grounder that struck the first-base bag and rolled for a double. He scored from third on Ryoichi Adachi's single.
"It was easy to put that run behind me, because of the way it happened," said Tanaka, who settled down to go the distance with the help of some offensive support from his teammates.