Baseball: A Two-Way Player-Chapter 514 - 107: Pitching Revolution, the Ghostly Forkball

The Yomiuri Giants’ batters were painstakingly trying to break through Lin Guanglai’s defense, but their first round of offense didn’t have any effect.

By the end of the first three innings, Lin Guanglai faced a total of 10 batters, struck out six times, walked twice, and allowed zero hits, almost single-handedly shutting down the Yomiuri Giants’ luxurious 1.5 billion yen lineup. Even Sakamoto Yuuto and Abe Shinjiro, renowned hitters in the Nihon Professional Baseball, couldn’t gain even a tiny advantage against him.

As the home crowd in the Tokyo Dome anticipated their batters to regain control in the subsequent rounds and dampen Lin Guanglai’s arrogant spirit, the visiting SoftBank Team opened the scoring first.

At the top of the fourth inning, South Korean powerhouse Lee Dae-ho, who was brought in on a team-high salary during the offseason, fronted the SoftBank Team’s offense. Judging by his early-season performance, Lee Dae-ho certainly lived up to every penny spent on him by SoftBank, having already hit 10 home runs in just slightly under two months of the new season, currently leading the Pacific League’s leaderboard alone.

Lee Dae-ho, whose height is similar to Lin Guanglai, nearly two meters, outweighs Lin Guanglai by a full third — and in baseball, greater mass often equates to more formidable strength.

If Lin Guanglai’s hitting is a combination of strength and technique, then Lee Dae-ho, when confronting most batters, hardly even needs to employ tactical elements; his arms, capable of effortlessly benching 180 kilograms, are enough to resolve over 90% of the challenges.

Unfortunately, our "big nephew" Sugano Tomoyuki has become the victim under the South Korean’s bat—

Struggling and tied at 2 balls and 2 strikes with Lee Dae-ho, under the guidance of Yomiuri Giants’ young catcher Kobayashi Masashi, Sugano Tomoyuki threw an outside slider towards the home plate, but the entire pitch plan was thoroughly deciphered by the experienced Lee Dae-ho, who sent a direct blow to the stands, scoring the South Korean slugger’s 11th homer of the season.

The subsequent batters seized Sugano Tomoyuki’s momentary instability, with Matsuda Naohiro from the sixth position hitting a double, followed by Yoshimura Yuuki completing the play, sending Matsuda from second back to home plate to score.

The atmosphere on site grew increasingly noisy, especially when the Yomiuri Giants’ third, fourth, and fifth batters were jointly ousted by Lin Guanglai and his teammates in the bottom of the fourth inning. Disharmonious voices began to emerge in the stands.

As mentioned before, Yomiuri Giants’ status in Japan mirrors that of a soccer giant like Real Madrid, and their fans are somewhat comparable to Madridistas at the Bernabeu.

As Japan’s oldest, most successful, and largest fan-based team, the deep historical heritage has instilled in Yomiuri Giants’ fans an "aristocratic mindset" that cannot accept prolonged failure and mediocrity:

They not only demand that the team win games but win in a manner befitting the Giants, they want to see aggressive swinging and offensive baseball, requiring players not only to possess skill but also the prowess and spirit fitting the Giants’ jersey.

For children developed through their own farm system and venerable veterans, the Giants Army can still maintain a little leniency; regarding those who are transferred from other teams, enjoying high salaries but unable to deliver satisfactory performances, or players with weak mental attributes, Yomiuri fans do not mind showing a bit of their "aristocratic dignity."

When the bottom of the fifth inning commenced and Yomiuri Giants’ foreign player Leslie Anderson stepped into the batting box, the previously noisy Tokyo Dome suddenly fell quiet, to the extent that the unusual feeling even made Lin Guanglai on the pitching mound slightly uncomfortable.

Many fans clad in orange stood up from their seats, arms crossed, looking at the fielding batter with scrutinizing eyes.

Just like how boos and waving white flags occur at the Bernabeu Stadium when Real Madrid performs poorly, this silence is a common way Yomiuri fans express their dissatisfaction with the team’s performance.

In such strange silence, Lin Guanglai began his pitch.

Being an examined and heavily invested foreign import by Yomiuri Giants, Leslie Anderson’s standout trait is that he is an exceptionally athletic, versatile hitter capable of mid-range, broad-angle play.

This is precisely why traditional, even arguably rigid "inside to outside" or "outside to inside" formulaic pitching strategies likely won’t work as effectively against such a batter.

The core of this at-bat strategy centers around continuously pressuring Anderson, preventing him from making smooth and accurate swings.

Lin Guanglai’s first pitch was still mercilessly an inside high-pressure fastball, a 158 km/h four-seam fastball like a fired missile, directly shot towards Anderson’s arm side.

The opponent reacted quickly too, almost instinctively quickly retracting his bat to dodge, letting the ball pass by.

"Strike!" The home-plate umpire raised his right hand without hesitation.

As a batter, Anderson felt quite displeased with the call. He really wanted to question the umpire behind him with a "Did you damn well not see that ball almost hit my hand?" but the scrutinizing gaze of the Yomiuri fans made him shrink back, forcing him to take a deep breath to calm his mind, and return to the batting box to stand firm.