As you may have noticed, Hanshin won its recent games with a large lead. The batters are in good condition, but other factors demonstrate that the team's power is growing only one month of the end of the competition. Hanshin is still in the first place and the difference with the Giants is again 1 game behind. Moreover, the Tigers are glad to be back in their Koshien since yesterday.
The ones revitalizing the team are the three clean ups: Toritani, Arai and Brazell.
Yesterday, captain Toritani broke the team's record of number of hits in a month (43). The previous record holder was none other than the former captain Akahoshi. Tori is a worthy heir.
Arai has started to regularly hit homeruns again. Today he batted 5 hits in 5 at bat.
The 5th batter does not remain behind. Brazell is still competing to be the homerun king. However, he declared that he only has interest in the overall victory, that will satisfy the fans even more than a homerun king title.
The clean ups are not the only stars in Hanshin's line-up. The Tigers can also rely on the formidable combination of the first and second batters: Murton is almost always credited with a base hit and Hirano successfully advances him with a sacrifice bunt.
Hirano is accumulating impacts of pitches, but luckily he is indestructible. His average is the higher in Hanshin (.351). He can be considered as one of the best batters of the League, since only Wada from Chunichi has a better average... .352. Concerning Murton, he is in the fourth place of the League with an AVG of .340.
And that is not all. Two rookies succeeded in carving a place among these talented players. Shunsuke Fujikawa has been a starting member since two weeks, and Takumi Akiyama is part of the starting rotation at only 19 years old.
Of curse, our current ace Kubo (12 wins, ERA 3.81) is still present, and Standridge seemed reliable in his recent games.
Hanshin has another ace up its sleeve: Atsushi Nohmi has finally recovered from his injury and will be back in the first team next week.
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