(Source: Nippon Professional Baseball)
Chiba Lotte Marines starting pitcher Kazuya Ojima tossed the first complete game of the 2024 Nippon Professional Baseball season on Friday in a 1-0 win against the Orix Buffaloes.
The lefty threw 105 pitches, allowing four hits, striking out six, and walking just one. The game’s only run was scored in the bottom of the fourth on an RBI single from Marines outfielder Hiromi Oka. With the win, Chiba Lotte improved to 3-4, and Orix dropped to 2-5.
Orix won the Pacific League pennant in 2023 over the Chiba Lotte Marines, but the team struggled early this season. They may need help adjusting to life without five-time NPB All-Star and three-time Pacific League MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who signed a 12-year $325 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers during the offseason.
The Marines would ask Ojima too much to replicate this performance every time he takes the mound, but it is a significant bounce back from his first start of the NPB season. On Opening Day on March 29, Ojima allowed three earned runs on five hits in five innings in a 4-1 loss against the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters.
His best statistical season came last season with the Marines when he posted a 3.47 ERA in 25 games (158.1 innings pitched). The 2024 season is his sixth season in NPB with Chiba Lotte.
Before Friday’s game, Ojima held a lifetime ERA of 3.60 with 427 strikeouts in 620.1 innings.
The Marines will rely on Ojima and star pitcher Roki Sasaki to lead them back to the postseason. With Shota Imanaga and Yoshinobu Yamamoto leaving for Major League Baseball, Sasaki is widely considered the best pitcher in NPB. The 22-year-old flamethrower allowed one earned run in five innings in a 3-2 loss against the Fighters on Sunday, March 31, at ZOZO Marine Stadium, the Marines’ home stadium.
The Marines (3-4) sit in fourth place in NPB’s Pacific League, two games back of the first-place Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks but just one game back of the Orix Buffaloes (2-5), raising the importance level for the next two games of the series for the club from Chiba Lotte.
The Chiba Lotte Marines will play the next game of their three-game series with the Orix Buffaloes on Saturday, April 6, at 1 a.m. EST at ZOZO Marine Stadium in Chiba City, Chiba, Japan.