Darvish Wins 11th

Yu Darvish pitched his fifth complete game of the season and the
Nippon Ham Fighters’ bats came alive in a 9-1 rout of the Softbank
Hawks on Wednesday.

Darvish (11-3) allowed one run and four hits, all singles,
striking out nine with one walk to earn his first complete-game
victory since pitching a shutout on May 23.

”I regret giving up a home run (to Nobuhiko Matsunaka) but I
was able to pitch solidly inside and I was pretty strong tonight,”
Darvish said. ”I was just focusing on facing each batter as they
came up and was able to set the pace of the game.”

The right-hander has won eight consecutive games against the
Hawks since 2007. Yoshiaki Fujioka (3-4) took the loss for
Pacific-League leader Softbank.

Atsunori Inaba hit a three-run homer and had four RBIs. Terrmel
Sledge doubled to drive in the opening run in the second and a
Tomochika Tsuboi RBI single made it 2-0 at Yahoo Dome.

Nobuhiko Matsunaka homered to right-center in the bottom half of
the inning but Shinji Takahashi and Inaba added RBIs in the third and
fifth, respectively.

Eiichi Koyano had an RBI single in the eighth before Inaba
rendered the final blow with his homer in a four-run ninth.