No savior in Sendai....

From stellar to cellar?

The Tohoku Rakuten Eagles last year had stellar pitching. This season it looks more like cellar pitching.
Hisashi Iwakuma gave up a three-run homer to Saitama Seibu’s Dee Brown in the sixth inning, and “closer” Kazuo Fukumori gave up hits to four of the five batters he faced and the Lions came back to beat the winless Eagles 6-4 on Saturday at Kleenex Stadium Miyagi.
Manager Marty Brown, who came over from the Hiroshima Carp in the offseason to replace famed skipper Katsuya Nomura, is 0-4 for his Pacific League team.
Fukumori, who spent a year and a half in the Texas Rangers organization, has blown both his save chances.
Brown said Fukumori is the only reliever with experience as a closer, but something needs to change in Sendai.
“This was awful,” Fukumori (0-2) said. “Just pathetic.”
It’s the fourth time in the 6-year-old expansion team’s history that the Eagles have lost four straight to start the season.

HAWKS 6, BUFFALOES 2
Toshiya Sugiuchi, the strikeout king the past two seasons, whiffed 14 en route to winning his second straight start. He allowed five hits and four walks.
Former Buffalo Jose Ortiz socked a two-run homer and an RBI single, and Munenori Kawasaki had three hits, including the 1,000th of his career, to pace the offense.
It was Orix’s first loss of the season.

FIGHTERS 3, MARINES 3
South Korean import and World Baseball Classic star Kim Tae Kyun had a scoring flyball and a two-run single in the ninth that got Chiba Lotte even, and the Marines played to a tie against the Nippon Ham Fighters at Chiba Marine Stadium.

CENTRAL LEAGUE
SWALLOWS 10, GIANTS 5
It didn’t take long for video replay to make an impact in Japan.
Yakult’s Aaron Guiel hit a shot to dead center that was clearly over the fence in the ninth inning of a win over Yomiuri at Tokyo Dome. Two games into the season, the funky setup at the Big Egg deceived umpires, who in live action ruled it a double.
Further review, however, clearly showed the ball had cleared the fence for a two-run shot and a 10-1 lead.
Guiel was already ticked off by an inside pitch from Norihito Kaneto. The outfielder walked toward the mound chirping away after the pitch and players from both benches crowded onto the field. Two pitches later, Guiel got revenge against Kento with his first longball of the season.
Jamie D’Antona slugged two homers and drove in a Japan career-best five for Yakult.

TIGERS 4, BAYSTARS 3, 11 innings
Kenji Jojima’s walk-off homer with two outs in the 11th inning lifted Hanshin over Yokohama at Kyocera Dome Osaka.
Jojima has two doubles, a homer and five RBIs in his first two CL games.
“I had a few goose bumps,” Jojima said of his walk-off shot.

DRAGONS 7, CARP 0
Kazuhiro Wada homered for the second straight day, and lefty Chen Wei-yin tossed a four-hitter as the Dragons blanked the Carp at Nagoya Dome.
Chen, last year’s ERA leader, fanned 11 and walked one.