Baseball: A Two-Way Player-Chapter 376 - 25: Rotation Issues

The day after the opening game against Rakuten ended, the SoftBank Team’s players quickly returned to their normal training routines.

The Nippon Professional Baseball schedule is relatively regular: usually no games on Monday, with six consecutive battles from Tuesday to Sunday; if a game is suspended due to heavy rain, it will automatically be postponed to before the climax series begins after the official games end for a rematch.

Since they just finished a game yesterday and have another series starting tonight, the intensity of the SoftBank First Team’s training this afternoon is not particularly high, with most players focusing on recovery running and low-intensity basic fielding exercises.

As a player being trained according to the Dual Swordsmanship plan, Lin Guanglai would train with the outfield group on days he doesn’t have to pitch, with his second position preset by the team as right fielder, which has less defensive pressure.

However, his performance today wasn’t great, and could even be described as poor: in the not particularly intense outfield high-fly ball drills, Lin Guanglai surprisingly made several catching errors today, which inevitably led to a scolding from the outfield defense coach, Shoji Tadakatsu.

It’s just daily routine training now; if an ordinary young player dared to make such mistakes during an official match, they would likely be demoted to the secondary team after the game ended.

At the side of the field, as the supervisor in charge of this team, Akiyama Koji’s eyes were also constantly on Lin Guanglai in the outfield — after last night’s game and now seeing Lin Guanglai’s abnormal performance in training, Akiyama Koji frowned, realizing that he might have been neglecting something all along. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Though during his years with the SoftBank Team, Akiyama Koji promoted many excellent rookies as a supervisor, and formulated a series of development plans tailored to different traits of players, when it comes to nurturing "Dual Swordsmanship" players, it was like a bride’s first time going onto a sedan chair for him, with almost zero experience.

In his previous mindset, being a Dual Swordsmanship player definitely meant the kind of all-round player who could both pitch a shutout as a pitcher and hit for power as a batter in one game — this indeed is the ideal mode of Dual Swordsmanship, and is also the ultimate goal Akiyama Koji set for Lin Guanglai.

But yesterday’s game served as a wake-up call: the ultimate goal of player development is for the team’s performance, regardless of how much the team values or how fond Akiyama Koji is of Lin Guanglai, the outcome of games and the team’s ranking should always come first.

Lin Guanglai has already proven his pitching and hitting talent in official games, proving that "Dual Swordsmanship" is absolutely feasible for him, which is great.

But new problems followed after Lin Guanglai left the field: if Lin Guanglai pitches in the pure form of Dual Swordsmanship, it means according to the rules, for the rest of the game, SoftBank won’t have a designated hitter in that spot, and the pitchers replacing Lin Guanglai later on must enter the batting lineup rotation.

In situations of a large lead or deficit, there’s naturally nothing to worry about, but as a supervisor, Akiyama Koji needs to consider all scenarios: what if, when Lin Guanglai steps down, the team is tied with the opponent or just trailing slightly?

In tight game situations, SoftBank inherently loses a strong designated hitter to replace a pitcher due to dropping the designated hitter slot, and now with Lin Guanglai, the batting pitcher stepping down, it’s akin to sending up a high probability automatic out every time the lineup reaches the pitching spot; although a pinch hitter can be brought in when it’s the pitcher’s turn to bat, this method also significantly strains the bullpen reserves.

Moreover, after seeing Lin Guanglai’s performance in today’s training, such feelings became even more intense: he realized his previous thoughts were overly idealistic, leading to ignoring the most crucial part of this process — Lin Guanglai himself.

Lin Guanglai is indeed a genius, a fact unanimously acknowledged throughout the entire SoftBank organization; given time, he will certainly become a new face for the team, leading the team forward as an ace.

But those are just ethereal future aspirations, ultimately, the current Lin Guanglai is just an 18-year-old boy who hasn’t even reached adulthood, and who has played only 1 professional game.

Not to mention anything else, his body alone hasn’t fully adapted to the intensity of Dual Swordsmanship training in professional baseball—

To protect starting pitchers, the current pitcher rotation rule in Nippon Professional Baseball is mainly "6 days in between", each starting pitcher pitches only once a week, resting 6 days before taking the mound again; during this period, their bodies and arms can get adequate rest, and training intensity is adjusted according to their condition.

But as a Dual Swordsmanship player, besides being a starting pitcher, Lin Guanglai is also part of the fielding group, and the fielders don’t have a "6 days in between" rotation concept.

Thus, during the intervals of pitcher rotation, Lin Guanglai, playing as a fielder, still needs to practice outfield defense and hitting as he did today — evidently, from Lin Guanglai’s continued errors and poor state in today’s training, his body isn’t yet adapting to such consecutive combat intensity.

If he continues to follow the current plan, he might collapse under the immense burden before becoming a qualified Dual Swordsmanship ace—if that day truly arrives, Akiyama Koji might become the biggest sinner in SoftBank Team and even the entire Nippon Professional Baseball community.

In Akiyama Koji’s era as a professional player, back-to-back (consecutive appearances on the same day) or one-day rest (only one day’s gap) intensive pitcher arrangements were very common; precisely this kind of outdated Showa-era thinking led him to subconsciously overlook this issue while formulating plans for Lin Guanglai.

If it were thirty years ago, even if pitchers expressed their physical pain, supervisors at that time would only dismiss it as "lacking perseverance", and might even resort to "punishment pitching" as the ultimate sanction for complaining pitchers.

"Taiyuan was right indeed, as a supervisor, not only pitchers, but also the team supervisor must keep pace with the development and progression of baseball as a sport."

For Akiyama Koji, he’s now just thankful for noticing it early, the sooner the issue is detected, the less negative impact it has on the players, and the more time he, as the supervisor, has to seek solutions.

Beckoning towards where Lin Guanglai stood, Akiyama Koji summoned this young man who shone so brightly last night to come in front of him — his expression wasn’t particularly good, his handsome face was filled with fatigue.

"Guanglai, as the team supervisor, it’s my oversight — now, take a good rest!"