Giants rally to beat Swallows in dramatic season opener

Japan Times

31-03-2025

The Yomiuri Giants won the Central League pennant last season.
On Friday night at Tokyo Dome, the reigning champions kicked off the 2025 campaign with a dramatic start to their quest to repeat.
The Giants rallied from three runs down to tie the game in the ninth inning, and Gakuto Wakabayashi hit a sayonara single in the 10th to lift the Kyojin to a 6-5 win over the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in the season opener at Tokyo Dome on Friday night.
Wakabayashi's fourth hit of the night was his biggest, and most of the 42,270 fans in attendance chanted his name as the Giants celebrated on the field.
Yomiuri trailed most of the night and entered the ninth behind 5-2. Takuya Kai singled to start the inning and fan favorite Hisayoshi Chono hit a one-out double to put runners on the corners. Wakabayashi singled to make the score 5-3. The next batter, Trey Cabbage, was hit by a pitch to load the bases.
"It kind of made me mad," Cabbage said half-jokingly after the game. "I wanted to hit."
Naoki Yoshikawa tied the score with a two-run single.
Closer Raidel Martinez, one of the club's prized free-agent pickups during the offseason, retired the top of the Swallows lineup in order in the 10th in his Giants debut.
Kai singled to begin the bottom of the 10th and was lifted for a pinch runner. Makoto Kadowaki bunted the runner over and manager Shinnosuke Abe sent Takumi Oshiro to the plate as a pinch hitter. After Oshiro struck out, Wakabayashi ended the game with a hit into left field.
Wakabayashi went 4-for-6 with a pair of RBIs as the leadoff man on opening night.
"It was a unique atmosphere, and I tried to give the team courage as the first batter," he said.
He joked he was nervous he might not do as well in the next game.
'It's important that we keep it going,' he said. 'I still feel a little uneasy about tomorrow, so I want to sleep well tonight.' Cabbage, hitting in the No. 2 spot behind Wakabayashi, was 3-for-4 with a two-run home run in his NPB debut.
"My job is to get on base in front of those big guys who can drive me in," Cabbage said. "So that was one thing I was trying to do, was just be aggressive and barrel some stuff and try to make something happen, and let the guys behind us drive us in." Raidel Martinez, one of the team's prized free-agent pickups during the offseason, pitched a 1-2-3 10th and earned the win in relief.
Swallows reliever Noboru Shimizu was charged with the loss.
The late heroics took Yomiuri starter Shosei Togo off the hook. Togo allowed four runs — two earned — over five innings.
Yakult seemed to be in control after taking a 4-0 lead in the fifth on run-scoring hits by Yoshihiro Akahoshi, Yuhei Nakamura, who drove in two runs with a single, and Haruki Nishikawa. Domingo Santana made it 5-0 with a home run to start the sixth.
The Giants began to rally in the eighth, with Wakabayashi opening the frame with a single and Cabbage connecting on his first NPB home run. Cabbage's blast seemed to fire up both his teammates, who celebrated in the dugout, and the fans, who immediately turned up the volume in the dome.
The home run set the stage for the rally that eventually put Yomiuri on top. "We got a great group of guys in there," Cabbage said. "It's fun to be around them, fun to show up for work every day. Just the energy, feeding off each other is amazing."