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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.

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Stewart gets 1st chance against front-line hitters on Friday

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SoftBank Hawks right-hander Carter Stewart Jr, who last year became the first marquee American amateur to turn pro with a Japanese team, is scheduled to pitch in Friday’s practice against the Pacific League rival Lotte Marines.

Last season, Stewart was limited to third-team action against amateur and independent minor league opposition. This spring he has pitched for the Hawks’ Western League farm squad in preseason action.

Nippon Professional Baseball was set to open on March 20, but has now been pushed back until April 10 at the earliest because of the new coronavirus outbreak, while all preseason games since Feb. 29 have been played behind closed doors.

For viewers in the US, PL TV is airing practice games and this one is on the schedule for Friday, March 20. HERE’S THE LINK.

Although the preseason exhibition season is now over, teams will begin playing “practice” games from Friday.

Stewart, the eighth overall pick in MLB’s 2018 June draft, said he is slated to throw between 90 and 100 pitches against the Marines.

“I’m going to go out there like I did last week. Obviously, they can hit a little bit better, so maybe they’re going to put me in a little bit tougher situations, but obviously, you’ve still got to perform,” he told reporters in Fukuoka.

Hawks manager Kimiyasu Kudo, a former pitcher himself, said he was keen to see what Stewart could do now.

“He’s gotten to the point where I want to give him a taste of first-team experience,” Kudo said. “I want to see what kind of pitching he can manage at this stage of his development.”