Mid-week milestone ...

Ochiai reaches 500 wins

After another meaningless mid-week off day, the Chunichi Dragons got a big hit at Seibu Dome and strong mound work to present their skipper with his 500th victory.
The Dragons topped the Seibu Lions 3-1 in interleague action, snapping a four-game winning streak for the Pacific League’s top team and recovering after dropping a pair to Lotte in Chiba.
Manager Hiromitsu Ochiai, the taciturn, temperamental skipper reached the milestone in his seventh season on the bench. Yomiuri Giants skipper Tatsunori Hara also reached 500 a little more than a week ago.
“I didn’t know why they brought me the game ball,” Ochiai said. “I guess you can reach this number if you do this for a long time.”
The big blow came from a former Lion, a 37-year-old player who is tied for the Central League lead in longballs with 14.
“It’s an honor to be on the podium for an accomplishment like this,” said Kazuhiro Wada, whose two-run homer in the fourth inning broke a scoreless tie and turned out to be the enough for starter Chen Wei-yin.
“I finally hit one hear in my third year [with the Dragons].
“This is the stadium where I’ve hit most of my homers, so it’s nice,” said Wada, who was with the Lions from 1997-2007. It was his first longball as a Dragon at Seibu Dome.
Chen (3-4), last year’s CL ERA leader, wobbled through 6.1 innings, allowing eight hits and two walks, but just one run. Takuya Asao worked 1.2 innings for the hold, and Hitoki Iwase, a staple in many of Ochiai’s wins, nailed it down with a scoreless ninth for his 12th save.
Lions ace Hideaki Wakui (5-3) suffered the loss, but went the distance.

BAYSTARS 4, FIGHTERS 1
Daisuke Miura outdueled Yu Darvish (4-3) in a matchup of present-day-Japan ace vs. yesterday’s Yokohama ace at Sapporo Dome.
Miura (3-2) scattered five hits and a walk, allowing an unearned run over eight innings to top Darvish, who surrendered three runs, two earned, in seven innings. Seiichi Uchikawa’s RBI groundout in the seventh broke a 1-1 tie, and Shuichi Murata followed with an RBI single for an insurance run.

BUFFALOES 10, TIGERS 6
Mitsutaka Goto went 4-for-4 with an RBI walk and four RBIs as host Orix wiped out Hanshin in the Kansai derby.
Tomotaka Sakaguchi was 3-for-4 with an RBI double for Orix.

MARINES 6, SWALLOWS 3
Saburo Omura had a bases-loaded double in a five-run first inning -- that came with two outs -- as Lotte sent visiting Yakult to its seventh straight interleague loss.
Yakult skipper Shigeru Takada was given a vote of confidence on Thursday’s off day.

EAGLES 5, GIANTS 4
Teppei Tsuchiya’s RBI single off Satoshi Fukuda (0-1) gave Rakuten a dramatic come-from-behind walk-off win over CL-leading Yomiuri at the Kleenex box.
Yomiuri closer Marc Kroon got one out before walking the next two and getting the hook. Kenshi Kawaguchi’s two-run single tied it and Teppei stroke a ball over a drawn-in infield. Fukuda didn’t record an out, facing four batters.

CARP 7, HAWKS 1
Kenta Maeda (7-2) scattered six hits and fanned 10, and Tetsuya Kokubo had two hits and four RBIs as Hiroshima downed SoftBank and Fukuoka Yahoo! Japan Dome.
Maeda has a league-best 68 punchouts and is tops in ERA at 1.59.