A whole lot of nothing ...

Dragons blank Carp for third straight game

Three straight days fans crowded into Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium and three days they saw nothing from the Carp’s offense.
Chen Wei-yin (8-7) blanked the Carp on three hits in a 6-0 win to become the third consecutive Dragons hurler to toss a shutout as Chunichi swept Hiroshima.
It was the first time three pitchers tossed back-to-back shutouts for a team since 1970.
“[Daisuke] Yamai got it all started when he set the tone with that first shutout,” said Chunichi skipper Hiromitsu Ochiai.
Chen fanned eight and walked one, while firing 145 pitches.
Tony Blanco anchored the attack, bashing his 21st homer and driving in three runs. Kazuhiro Wada blasted his 25th longball and Motonobu Tanishige hit his seventh -- both solo shots -- to back Chen.
The Carp’s best chance to score came in the seventh inning. A walk and two singles loaded the bases with one out, but Tetsuya Kokubo fanned and Yoshikazu Kura chased a ball out of the zone on a 3-2 pitch to strike out.
Chen fanned the side in the eighth and the leadoff man in the ninth while retiring the last six.

BAYSTARS 8, GIANTS 7
Brett Harper blasted a dramatic walk-off grand slam off closer Marc Kroon (2-2) as Yokohama came back to edge visiting Yomiuri.
Harper, added the roster on June 25, went 4-for-5 to raise his average to .487. It was his fifth homer and helped the BayStars win consecutive games for the first time in two months.
Yomiuri scored seven runs in the sixth inning, but a single and two walks from Kroon set up Harper, who became the 34th CL player to hit a walk-off slam.

TIGERS 11, SWALLOWS 4
CL leading batter Marr Murton slugged a three-run homer to highlight a sixth-run seventh inning as Hanshin moved to within a half-game of the top spot by downing host Yakult.


PACIFIC LEAGUE
EAGLES 3, FIGHTERS 2
Takeshi Yamasaki went deep for the second day in a row, hitting his 18th, and Todd Linden cracked his fifth as Rakuten took an early lead and held off Nippon Ham at the Kleenex Box.
Satoshi Nagai (5-7) won his first game in a month, allowing one run over seven innings.

MARINES 9, LIONS 1
Bill Murphy (8-2) scattered four hits and four walks, while fanning 10 for his first complete game in Japan as host Lotte topped Seibu.

HAWKS 4, BUFFALOES 2
Hiroki Kokubo drove in the go-ahead run in the sixth, and four relievers each threw a scoreless inning at Kyocera Dome Osaka to preserve Yang Yao-hsun’s second career win.