FUKUOKA (Interstat) — Gota Suzuki earned the win in relief and Kazuki Sugiyama closed it out as the SoftBank Hawks beat the Nippon-Ham Fighters 6-4 on Wednesday evening in Game 1 of their playoff series at Mizuho PayPay Dome Fukuoka. SoftBank leads the series 1-0. Suzuki improved to 5-1, while Sugiyama earned his 36th save. Sachiya Yamasaki took the loss, falling to 5-2. Haruki Hosono pitched four innings of two-hit relief for Nippon-Ham, striking out four and walking one. Yuya Gunji went 2 for 5 with a home run and one RBI. Kensuke Kondoh went 2 for 4 with one RBI for SoftBank. Nippon-Ham had 11 hits, while SoftBank had eight. Attendance was 39,894, and the game took 3 hours, 14 minutes. Nippon-Ham is now 81-64-3, and SoftBank is 92-50-3. Yuki Matsumoto and Darwinzon Hernandez each threw a scoreless inning for SoftBank, and Yuki Tsumori also worked a scoreless inning.