After his previous poor outing, Rick van den Hurk earned the win today for the Softbank Hawks in the game vs the Chiba Lotte Marines that was won 8-3.
In his previous outing, Rick was highly ineffective as he gave up ten earned runs in just five-plus innings and was tabbed with the loss.
Today, Rick allowed three runs in five innings, struck out five and walked one. He needed 96 pitches to do this. In the third inning, when the Softbank Hawks already had a commanding 7-0 lead, the Chiba Lotte Marines scored a run. Chuyoshi Sugano hit a leadoff double off Van den Hurk and consecutive groundouts drove him in for the Marines’ first run.
The tall Dutch right-handed pitcher gave up a walk, a double and a single in the sixth that drove in a run and put runners on the corners. At that point, he was replaced by Shinya Kayama, who could not prevent the Marines from scoring another run Rick was credited for.
Despite his first start of the season, Rick got plenty of run support today.
Here is a summary of today’s game:
After 25 games, the Softbank Hawks slowly start to climb in the standings. Currently, they are in second place with a 14-11 record, 4.5 games behind the Seibu Lions.
Dutch Baseball Hangout 