FUKUOKA (Interstat) — Yugo Maeda allowed one earned run over five innings, Tomoya Masaki homered and drove in two runs, and the SoftBank Hawks beat the Nippon-Ham Fighters 6-2 on Friday in Game 3 of their playoff series at Mizuho PayPay Dome Fukuoka. SoftBank leads the series 3-0. Maeda, who improved to 13-1, gave up five hits, walked one and struck out three. Takayuki Katoh took the loss after yielding three earned runs on six hits with one strikeout in 4 1/3 innings, dropping to 12-4. Yuudai Yamamoto and Yudai Shoji each had two hits and an RBI for SoftBank. Nippon-Ham got a hit and an RBI from Kotaro Kiyomiya. Taisei Yanagawa struck out two in a scoreless inning of relief. Nippon-Ham had eight hits, and SoftBank finished with 11. Attendance was 39,894. The game took 3 hours, 2 minutes. Nippon-Ham fell to 81-66-3, while SoftBank improved to 94-50-3.