A possibility has been raised that Shohei Ohtani (photo, 28, LA Angels), who is active in the American Professional Baseball Major League (MLB), will start in the 2023 World Baseball Classic (WBC) match against Korea.
Japanese sports magazine <Sports Nippon> predicted on the 18th that Japanese coach Hideki Kuriyama planned pitching operations that had been calculated backwards from the quarterfinals, and that Ohtani could start as a starter in the first round, the biggest hurdle in the game against Korea.
<Sports Nippon> praised Ohtani’s performance in the past Korea-Japan match and highly evaluated the possibility of starting. Ohtani showed overwhelming pitching with 3 hits, 3 walks and 21 strikeouts in 13 scoreless innings in two games against Korea in the 2015 Premier12. At that time, Ohtani overwhelmed other Korean players with a fastball of 161 km/h and a forkball that reached 150 km/h.
Korea will play against Japan at Tokyo Dome at 7:00 pm on March 10th. It is the first time in 14 years since 2009 that Korea and Japan face each other at the WBC. The Korean national team will play the first round of the WBC in the order of △Australia △Japan △China △Czech Republic. Coach Lee Kang-cheol of the Korean national baseball team predicted an all-out war, believing that the match between Australia and Japan, the opponents in the first and second games, would be a watershed for advancing to the second round.
The Korean national team is expected to employ a strategy of increasing the number of pitches as much as possible if Ohtani is selected as the starting pitcher for the Korea-Japan match. In this WBC, a pitcher’s pitch limit is specified. A pitcher can throw up to 65 pitches in a round. Since a pitcher who pitched 50 to 65 pitches in the match against Korea has to rest for four days, Japan is carefully considering the timing of Ohtani’s appearance. 카지노사이트
Meanwhile, the Korean national team will train for the WBC from the 15th (local time) to the 27th at the Kino Complex in Tucson, Arizona, USA.