“If you play long, you get tired”
The Seibu Lions of Nippon Professional Baseball have announced their spring training schedule for next February, but it’s different from the other 11 teams in both leagues. They’ll start spring training late again next year.
They will begin spring training on February 6. The first team will camp at Nango Stadium in Nichinan City, Miyazaki Prefecture, Kyushu, and the second team will camp at Haruno Baseball Stadium in Kochi City, Kochi Prefecture, Shikoku. Training will continue until February 25, followed by an exhibition game. There will be three days of rest during the training period.
Korean and Japanese professional baseball teams usually go to their training grounds on January 30-31 and start their schedule on February 1. The months of December and January following the end of the season are a period of inactivity where team training is prohibited.
Only the Seibu start nearly a week later. Head coach Kazuo Matsui, 48, a former Seibu legend, said the team will focus on a short period of time to prepare for the season.
“The players train non-stop in the off-season. They build up their bodies before the camp starts,” he said. 바카라사이트 The logic is that a longer camp might reduce the effectiveness of training. Matsui said he didn’t have a problem with shortening the camp this year. He said it worked.
This year, Nippon Professional Baseball will open its regular season on March 29. Seibu is scheduled to open with a three-game series against Rakuten.
There are some critics of the shortened camp.
This season under Matsui, Seibu finished fifth out of six teams in the Pacific League. They won 66 games, tied one and lost 77, and had a winning percentage of 4.05%. They finished 5.5 games behind Rakuten, who finished in third place.
Team ERA of 2.93, second only to the three-time defending champion Oryx Buffaloes. Struggled with a weak offense. The team batted 2-for-33, good for 11th overall. They were also 11th in team runs scored. The loss of center fielder Hotaka Yamakawa, 32, to a sexual assault case early in the season was a blow.
Yamakawa appeared in 17 games through early May, batting just 2-for-59 (15-for-15) with no home runs and five RBIs. The home run and RBI leader, who hit 41 home runs and 90 RBIs last year, was missing a lot.
Some have criticized the shortened training period for his poor performance. Seibu finished sixth in 2021 and third in 2020.
Most Japanese professional teams prepare for the season in February in Okinawa, Kyushu, and Shikoku, where the weather is mild. 안전놀이터 They start with exhibition games in their camps before moving up to their home cities.