Card Of The Week April 17

Today is Sunday which means it's once again "Roki Sasaki acts like he's playing NPB with a cheat code" day.  Today of course was Sasaki's first start since he threw a perfect game against the Buffaloes and he picked up where he left off last week, going eight perfect innings against the Fighters while striking out 14.  The Marines, however, had failed to score off of Fighters' starter Naoyuki Uwasawa and Nippon-Ham's bullpen and Lotte manager Tadahito Iguchi decided to pull Sasaki after he'd thrown 102 pitches.  Naoya Masuda kept the no-hitter intact through the ninth inning (I think he let a batter get on base via a wild pitch on a third strike but I'm not positive - according to the box score he pitched one inning and had three strikeouts while giving up no walks or hits but he somehow faced four batters) but the Marines again failed to score in the bottom of the ninth.  In the top of the tenth, the Fighters finally broke through with their first of the game when Chusei Mannami came up against Yuji Nishino and did this:

Naoki Miyanishi held the Marines off in the bottom of the tenth and the Fighters won the game 1-0 after only getting the single hit by Mannami.

Sasaki has now retired 52 consecutive batters.  His stats for the season are 56 strikeouts, two walks, seven hits and four runs in 31 innings.

Since I've featured Sasaki both of the last two weeks, I thought I'd feature Mannami today.  Here's a card of his from last year's BBM Fighters set (#F64):