YOKOHAMA (Kyodo) -- With his team facing yet another daunting postseason challenge, DeNA BayStars manager Daisuke Miura said Friday he is not content to just show up in the Japan Series against the powerhouse Pacific League champion SoftBank Hawks.

The best-of-seven series kicks off Saturday at DeNA's Yokohama Stadium after the Central League's third-place club won six of eight CL Climax Series road playoff games to advance to the season finale for the first time since its 2017 loss to SoftBank.

"We want to go into this with the momentum we had from winning the Climax Series," said Miura, who pitched for the BayStars in 1998, when the team last won it all.

Each team led its league in scoring, but while the Hawks led the PL in pitching and defense, the BayStars led both leagues in errors and were fifth worst in the six-team CL in runs allowed. In the postseason, however, the BayStars have pitched and fielded well.

"The Hawks excel in every facet of the game, as their numbers suggest," Miura said. "And though I'm happy to be bringing another Japan Series to Yokohama Stadium, we're not here just to play the games. We want to win."

Hawks manager Hiroki Kokubo said the BayStars were an unknown quantity, and his focus would be on keeping them from hitting for extra bases.

"We played just three interleague games against them, and my lasting impression is that a guy we pitched carefully to, Tyler Austin, hit a game-tying three-run homer off us," Kokubo said.

Although the Hawks previously reached the Japan Series in 2020, the team has won its last 12 straight series games. The task of ending that streak on Saturday falls to right-hander Andre Jackson.

A first-year import, Jackson went 8-7 in the regular season with a 2.90 ERA. A key, he said, will be for the BayStars to play better at home than they have so far this year.

"I'm excited. We have a good team, they have a good team," Jackson said. "Everybody starts over. We've been playing really good baseball the last couple of weeks, and anything can happen."

"We played better on the road this year. (At home) we need to bring that same kind of swagger we had on the road and not get comfortable."

Opposing him on Saturday will be Hawks ace Kohei Arihara, who was 14-7 with a 2.36 ERA this season.

"I'm grateful for this opportunity, and all I can do is pitch as well as I can to each batter and do my part," Arihara said.

The Hawks' big question mark is the availability of their top run producer, left fielder Kensuke Kondo, who sprained an ankle late in the season and can hit but will likely be unable to field.

(By Jim Allen)