Not much fight in Fighters ...

Lotte burns Nippon Ham

This is how badly things are going for the defending Pacific League champion Nippon Ham Fighters: In a three-game series at home, they got swept -- and it wasn’t that close.
Tadahito Iguchi doubled and tripled and had an RBI, and Saburo Omura had three hits and an RBI as the first-place Lotte Marines had double digits in hits (14) for the sixth straight game and moved 12 games above .500 with a 6-3 win at Sapporo Dome.
“The atmosphere on the bench is the best I’ve ever experienced in my 15 years as a pro. I don’t feel like we’re going to lose,” said Omura, whose team has won four straight.
The Fighters are nine games under .500 for the first time in five seasons.

LIONS 7, EAGLES 3
Fumiya Nishiguchi (1-1) lowered his ERA to 7.01 by allowing a run over six innings as Seibu topped Rakuten.
No. 8 batter Hisashi Takayama had a two-run double and No. 9 hitter Tatsuyuki Uemoto went 3-for-4 with two RBIs to back the 37-year-old Nishiguchi, who won at Seibu Dome for the first time since last April 9.

HAWKS 5, BUFFALOES 1
Kazuki Kondo (1-2) fired wildly past third for a throwing error in the ninth inning that allowed the go-ahead run to score as SoftBank rallied for four ninth-inning runs to defeat Orix at Kyocera Dome Osaka.
Early in the day, the Hawks picked up veteran slugger Roberto Petagine, a 38-year-old former Yakutl Swallows and Yomiuri Giants infielder who has played in South Korea the past two seasons.

CENTRAL LEAGUE

GIANTS 5, TIGERS 1
Hayato Sakamoto's grand slam in the seventh inning turned a one-deficit into a three-run lead, and Alex Ramirez later homered to back Tetsuya Utsumi (4-0), who outlasted Casey Fossum as the Giants rallied against Hanshin to avoid a three-game sweep at Tokyo Dome.
Fossum worked six scoreless innings, but the bullpen couldn’t save the one-run lead.

DRAGONS 7, BAYSTARS 4
Kazuki Yoshimi (2-1) held Yokohama to two runs over 8.1 innings before taking a liner off his right knee and departing, but Chunichi held on at Nagoya Dome.

SWALLOWS 2, CARP 1
Jamie D’Antona’s go-ahead RBI single in the ninth was the difference as Yakult came back to down Hiroshima at the Zoom.