NISHINOMIYA, Japan – Masahiro Tanaka earned his 202nd career win spanning Japanese professional baseball and the U.S. major leagues, surpassing a mark set by Japanese Hall of Famer Hideo Nomo, as the Yomiuri Giants edged the Hanshin Tigers 4-3 on Thursday.<\/p>\n
A former ace of the New York Yankees, Tanaka (2-0) allowed three runs on seven hits with four strikeouts over six innings at Koshien Stadium.<\/p>\n
Bobby Dalbec’s three-run homer off Tigers starter Easton Lucas (0-2) opened the scoring in the top of the first inning, and the Giants added an insurance run in the third.<\/p>\n
The 37-year-old right-hander gave up a two-run homer to Teruaki Sato in the first but battled through, escaping a fifth-inning jam as the Hanshin Tigers cut the deficit to 4-3.<\/p>\n
“I wanted to hold onto the lead,” Tanaka said of the fifth inning, adding, “I’m relieved I was able to get the win today.”<\/p>\n
Giants relievers shut out the final three innings, with Raidel Martinez closing out the ninth.<\/p>\n
Last year, Tanaka became the fourth pitcher to reach a total of 200 Nippon Professional Baseball and Major League Baseball wins, following Nomo, Hiroki Kuroda and current San Diego Padres starter Yu Darvish.<\/p>\n
Tanaka began his professional career in 2007 with the Pacific League Rakuten Eagles and joined the Yankees in 2014, before returning to Japan in 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NISHINOMIYA, Japan – Masahiro Tanaka earned his 202nd career win spanning Japanese professional baseball and the U.S. major…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2302],"tags":[5,2353,2352],"class_list":{"0":"post-677027","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-npb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-nippon-professional-baseball","10":"tag-npb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116415282715974118","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}