I decided to highlight two events from the past week. On Friday Hawks pitcher Shuta Ishikawa threw NPB's first no-hitter for 2023 while beating the Lions 8-0 in Fukuoka. Ishikawa struck out eight while walking three and hitting a batter. On Saturday, Dragons outfielder Yuki Okabayashi went 0-5 against the Swallows, bringing his 29 game hitting streak to a close just four games short of the record - 33 games by Yoshihiko Takahashi of the Carp in 1979. Okabayashi's streak is now the longest in Dragons history, surpassing Michio Nishizawa's 25 game streak from 1949.
Here's a fun fact about the drafting of each of these guys. For Ishikawa, it's that he was drafted as an ikusei or development player by the Hawks in 2013. I was briefly wondering Friday if he was the first former ikusei player to throw a no-hitter before realizing he wasn't even the first one for the Hawks - that'd have been Kodai Senga back in 2019. For Okabayashi, it's that the Dragons originally drafted him as a pitcher in 2019 but converted him to the outfield by spring of 2020 (his 2020 BBM Rookie Edition card has him as a pitcher but his 1st Version card has him as an outfielder). Here's a draft pick card for each of them:
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| 2014 BBM Rookie Edition #028 |
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| 2019 Epoch One #756 |
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