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Ramping up: 17 days to go

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Practice games ahead of the June 19 Opening Day got underway on Tuesday in Japan, with each team scheduled for 12 games before things get underway. On Tuesday, the clubs announced teams will have expanded rosters, and on Monday, NPB announced official schedules for the first time since it abandoned opening the season on March 20. The Central League mapped out its plan until July 23 and the Pacific League until July 19.

Austin blasts off

Journeyman first baseman / corner outfielder Tyler Austin picked up where he left off in the spring. The new DeNA BayStar homered and went 3-for-3 in the BayStars June practice game opener against the Rakuten Eagles on Tuesday.

“He’s been swinging the bat pretty good in batting practice and today he had the opportunity to show that in the game. And he swung pretty good today,” BayStars manager Alex Ramirez said of his new import who went 12-for-35 with six doubles, for home runs and six walks in the preseason.

Bour hits 1st home run in Japan

New Hanshin Tiger Justin Bour, who had four singles and a walk in his 20 official preseason plate appearances (not counting practice games) homered on Tuesday as the Tigers and Hiroshima Carp ramped up their preparations with a practice game at Koshien Stadium.

Ynoa goes 5 for Swallows

Gabriel Ynoa, who came to Japan this year to play his 11th pro season, started at Jingu Stadium for the Yakult Swallows and allowed one run over five innings in their 15-3 practice game win over the Chunichi Dragons.

Rosters, import limits increased

NPB announced changes to its roster limits due to the additional stress that comes with starting a season in the midst of a pandemic, Sports Nippon reported Tuesday.

The number of players eligible to suit up for a game will be increased from 25 to 26, while the active roster will be increased from 29 to 31. The limit on active import players will be increased from four to five, although the game roster limit will continue to be four, with no more than three pitchers or three position players.

“There is no downside to increasing the number of active players or the number on the bench, so increasing those is no problem,” said Tadahito Mori, the executive director of NPB’s player union.

Because of the delayed start to the season, some consideration is being given to push the deadline for non-waiver roster additions to Sept. 20 from July 31, an ideal the players association is also in favor of

The 2020 regular season schedule as announced June 1, can be found HERE.

Baseball, News, Paid Content

ramping up: 21 days to go

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One aspect of the long layoff forced by the novel coronavirus is that players who were due to miss the original March 20 start of the season, are now regaining fitness and may be able to make the roster when the season finally starts on June 19.

350 days

That’s how long it will be between starts for Naoyuki Uwasawa when he takes the mound for the Nippon Ham Fighters in Tuesday’s practice game.

Last season, Uwasawa was a key component of the Rube Goldberg contraption that was the Fighters’ pitching rotation last season. Manager Hideki Kuriyama used him and Kohei Arihara as the pillars in conventional starting roles, with a handful of others tasked with going either once or twice through the opposing lineup depending on the skipper’s confidence in them.

In a June 18 interleague game, Uwasawa was kneecapped by a batted ball hit by Neftali Soto, the DeNA BayStars’ two-time Central League home run champ. Prior to that game, the Fighters starting pitchers were 26-18 with a 3.65 ERA. Afterward, even with some superb 1-inning opening acts by Mizuki Hori, they went 18-31 with a 4.32 ERA.

On Thursday, he faced five batters in a simulated game at the Fighters’ minor league facility in Kamagaya, Chiba Prefecture, and is expected to pitch two innings on Tuesday at the Lotte Marines’ Zozo Marine Stadium in Chiba.

Yanagita back with a bang

Yuki Yanagita, who until the recent ascension of Hiroshima Carp right fielder Seiya Suzuki, was considered the Japanese outfielder most coveted by MLB clubs, returned to the SoftBank Hawks’ first team for an intrasquad game on Saturday. Yanagita has been rehabbing since his 2019 dumpster fire of a season was capped with right elbow surgery in the offseason.

Yanagita missed most of the season with a knee injury and failed by the slimmest of margins to get the 140 days of service time needed to be a free agent this winter. Had the Hawks brought him up a few days earlier, he would have been on track to fulfil his stated goal of playing in the majors. They didn’t and he signed a long-ass contract that keeps him in Fukuoka for essentially the rest of his career.

On Saturday, according to the Sankei Sports, he hit an opposite-field homer from submarine right-hander Rei Takahashi, the Pacific League’s 2019 rookie of the year and another player who was due to miss the start of the season in March but now has a shot at helping out the rotation from the start.

Stewart takes drive off shin

The Hawks’ Carter Stewart Jr left the mound after pitching just one inning when he took a shot off his right shin that was turned into the final out of the inning.

Iguchi changes tune on Sasaki

Eighteen-year-old right-hander Roki Sasaki who repeatedly was clocked at over 100 miles per hour in his final high school season, apparently will appear in a practice game for the Lotte Marines in the coming weeks, manager Tadahito Iguchi indicated to the media on Saturday.

Earlier in the week, Iguchi had said Sasaki, who twice hit 160 kilometers per hour in a simulated game on Tuesday, would not be ready to appear in a game next month.