2023 WBC championship candidate Japan faces Mexico in the semifinals on the 21st.
Mexico is the first ever to advance to the semifinals. Japan is a very familiar place. Japan is the only team that has never missed the semifinals in five WBC tournaments. Launched in 2006, it is not too much to say that the WBC is a stage for Japan.
Japan’s starting match against Mexico is 21-year-old Roki Sasaki카지노사이트 (Lotte Chiba Marines). Even before the tournament, Sashika’s menacing fastball and forkball were widely known. Major league clubs were also paying attention early on. The important thing about this appearance is that it is a debut on the American stage at Londipo Park in Miami, where the semi-finals will take place. It is certain that American scouts will be mobilized to watch the game in person or monitor it on TV. The Mexico-Japan match is already sold out.
For MLB scouts, pitchers are much more attractive than fielders. In line with the semi-finals, ESPN’s ESPN reporter Jeff Passan focused on the event with an article that was almost like a long essay.
From the title, it is praised with such things as Better heat than Ohtani?, DeGrom-like stuff?, and Japan’s Roki Sasaki is baseball’s next great ace.
Sasaki made one start in this WBC tournament. Mexico is the second. He gave up 2 hits, 2 walks, 8 strikeouts and 1 run in 3.2 innings against the Czech Republic in Group B. You can see his powerful pitching with 8 strikeouts while catching 11 out counts. The pitcher strikes out. Sashiki’s main weapons are a fastball and a forkball, and a slider and curveball are his secondary pitches.
According to ESPN, he hit 36 four-seam fastballs out of 66 pitches against the Czech Republic. Average fastball velocity was measured at 161 km (100.1 miles). 20 were 100 miles (160 km). Since the introduction of Statcast, which measures pitch and exit velocity in 2008, he is the starting pitcher who has thrown the most fastballs of 160 km with the fewest pitches.
The most pitches in a game of 160 km in history was on July 12, 2022, St. Louis Cardinals bullpen Jordan Hicks threw 24 out of 38 pitches against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Sasaki induced 22 misses against Czech batters. However, the Czech Republic is not a professional baseball player, so it is different from the Mexican hitters centered on the major leagues. The game against Mexico is the real test bed. The pitch limit for the semifinal against Mexico is 95.
Experts who have seen Sasaki say, “Sasaki has all the ingredients to do whatever he wants. If he’s the best in the world, he’s capable of it too.”Sasaki’s entry into the US is a definite fact. Time is just an issue. It seems that the club is currently in the process of earning a lot of money through posting before becoming a complete free agent. In Japan, since Hideo Nomo in 1995, the best pitchers in Japanese professional baseball at the time entered the major leagues without exception. The main characters are Daisuke Matsuzaka, Hiroki Kuroda, Koji Uehara, Masahiro Tanaka, Yu Darvish, and Shohei Otani.