Kensuke Kondo hit a tie-breaking three-run first-inning home run, and Kohei Arihara allowed two runs over seven innings as the SoftBank Hawks downed the Lotte Marines 4-2 Thursday in their battle for the Pacific League postseason's second seed.
With no outs and two on in a 1-1 game at PayPay Dome, Kondo's 23rd home run, off Lotte strikeout artist Atsuki Taneichi (10-6), put Arihara in the driver's seat.
A night after the Orix Buffaloes clinched their third straight PL pennant, the third-place Hawks' win moved them to within one game of the second-place Marines.
The Marines opened the scoring on Gregory Polanco's PL-leading 25th home run in the first, but SoftBank struck back in the first, tying it 1-1 on a Yuki Yanagita RBI single.
Kondo then launched a hanging 1-1 slider high into the right-field stands.
"I haven't hit well with runners in scoring position in September," Kondo said. "I wanted to get the go-ahead run in while staying out of a double play."
Arihara (9-4) allowed five hits without a walk. His third and final strikeout allowed him to strand the potential tying runs on base.
"From my point of view, he wasn't that good tonight," Kondo joked about Arihara, his former Nippon Ham Fighters teammate. "But he got the job done. It was good work."
Taneichi followed Kondo's homer with five straight strikeouts and finished with seven over five innings, giving him 153 for the season as he reclaimed the PL lead from Orix ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
The Hawks' win moved them 1-1/2 games ahead of the fourth-place Rakuten Eagles, who fell 7-2 to the Seibu Lions.
In the Central League, where the struggle for the final two playoff spots is equally tight, the Yomiuri Giants moved to within a game of the third-place DeNA BayStars with a 5-3 win over the Hanshin Tigers.
