FUKUOKA (Interstat) — Haruya Tanaka pitched six strong innings and Kyuto Ueda homered as the Chiba Lotte Marines edged the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks 4-3 on Thursday night at Fukuoka Yahuoku! Dome. Tanaka allowed two earned runs on four hits and struck out eight, improving to 2-5.

Ueda opened the scoring with a two-run homer in the second. Hisanori Yasuda’s groundout in the fifth made it 3-0. SoftBank answered in the bottom of the fifth as Tomoya Masaki doubled in a run and Ryoya Kurihara grounded out for another. Ryusei Ogawa’s solo homer in the sixth pushed Lotte’s lead to 4-2. Tatsuru Yanagimachi hit a sacrifice fly in the ninth for the final margin.

Lotte outhit SoftBank 10-7. Carter Stewart Jr. took the loss, dropping to 6-5. Rikuto Yokoyama earned his 28th save despite allowing one run in the ninth.

The Marines improved to 48-51-3, while the Hawks fell to 66-38-2. Attendance was 39,894, and the game lasted 3 hours, 9 minutes.