Osaka, Japan (SportsNetwork.com) – Kenta Maeda and three relievers combined on a three-hit shutout, leading Samurai Japan to a 2-0 win over the Major League Baseball All-Stars in the opener of the 2014 Japan Series.<\/p>\n
Maeda threw five innings of two-hit ball, walked two and struck out two. He yielded a first-inning single to Robinson Cano and a double by Dexter Fowler with two outs in the fifth.<\/p>\n
Ben Zobrist grounded out to end the fifth inning and the MLB All-Stars managed just one more hit, a one-out single in the ninth by Evan Longoria. Justin Morneau then lined to first and Tetsuto Yamada turned it into a game-ending unassisted double play.<\/p>\n
Matt Shoemaker, runner-up for the American League Rookie of the Year, took the loss for the MLB All-Stars. The Angels hurler yielded two runs on six hits with a walk and five strikeouts over five innings.<\/p>\n
The Japanese stars reached Shoemaker for a run in the second when Seiichi Uchikawa led off with a single, took second on a double by Hayato Sakamoto and scored on a sacrifice fly by Nobuhiro Matsuda. Sakamoto singled with one out in the fourth and was erased on a fielder’s choice by Matsuda, who then stole second and scored on a single by Yamada to make it 2-0.<\/p>\n
Tommy Hunter worked around a pair of two-out singles in the sixth and Hector Santiago pitched a scoreless seventh despite a pair of walks. Mark Melancon allowed a leadoff single in the eighth, but got a force out and a double play to give the MLB All-Stars a chance in the ninth.<\/p>\n
The teams will take Thursday off to travel to Tokyo for three games this weekend. The five-game series will then conclude on Tuesday in Sapporo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Osaka, Japan (SportsNetwork.com) – Kenta Maeda and three relievers combined on a three-hit shutout, leading Samurai Japan to a 2-0 win over the Major League Baseball All-Stars in the opener of the 2014 Japan Series. Maeda threw five innings of two-hit ball, walked two and struck out two. He yielded a first-inning single to Robinson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25682,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25661\/revisions\/25682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}