On Friday, all eyes were on Chiba where Roki Sasaki of the Marines was matched up against Kodai Senga of the Hawks. But while Sasaki put in another impressive performance, striking out 11 in six innings of work in a game Lotte eventually lost after the bullpen blew a two run lead in the ninth and gave up two more runs in the eleventh, what turned out to be the most impressive matchup happened in Nagoya between the Dragons and the Tigers. Dragons starter Yudai Ohno was perfect through his first nine innings but because Tigers starter Koyo Aoyagi was also pitching well, the Dragons hadn't scored. Ohno continued pitching into the tenth and got two outs before Teruaki Sato doubled for Hanshin's first hit of the day. Ohno got the next batter out and got the win when Takaya Ishikawa hit a walk-off RBI single of Aoyagi who had also continued beyond the ninth inning. Ohno ended up throwing 9 2/3 perfect innings and had a complete game, one hit, ten inning shutout.
Ohno, of course, previously threw a no-hitter back in September of 2019. I think if he'd completed it he'd be the only active pitcher in NPB with multiple no-hitters, although Shun Yamaguchi was one of three pitchers to combine on a no-hitter in 2017 and pitched a solo one in 2018. Here are a couple cards celebrating Ohno's gem from 2019 (his catcher was Shota Ohno so of course, this was the "Ohno-Ohno no-no"):
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| 2019 Epoch One #606 |
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| 2019 BBM Fusion #90 |
As a comparison to Roki Sasaki's Epoch One card for his perfect game, the print run for Ohno's card was 111.
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