Yomiuri Giants: Taishi Ohta continues to push himself
by Gen on Feb.08, 2010 @ 9:54 am, under NPB, Spring Camp
=== 11:59pm JST
...Kyohei Tsuchimoto threw 46 pitches during BP on Monday while facing Ryota Wakiya and Yoshiyuki Kamei.
Kamei managed to nail a bomb off Tsuchimoto during his BP session. Kamei later told reporters he's slowly beginning to get a feel for his swing.
...Tetsuya Utsumi threw 45 pitches during BP on Monday. He faced Hiroki Nakazawa (22 pitches, 4 could-be hits and Asahi.com mentions that it was Tomoya Ichikawa) and Itaru Hashimoto (23 pitches, 2 could-be hits). Utsumi focused on going inside and outside with his pitches. He also threw a number of cutters.
...Hayato Sakamoto and Nakazawa took 28 swings against Norihito Kaneto during BP on Monday and collected 9 could-be hits.
...Takanori Hoshi and Takahiro Suzuki took 29 swings against Shun Tono during BP on Monday and collected 6 could-be hits.
=== 6:03pm JST
...Dicky Gonzalez threw 78 pitches during a bullpen session on Monday. He also apparently through his last pitch into the backstop behind the catcher to wake the coaches up. It was Gonzalez's second bullpen during Spring camp.
...Micheal Nakamura tossed 100 pitches (including his slider and curve) during a bullpen session on Monday. Nakamura told reporters that he's feeling much better than he was last season at this time.
...Shugo Fujii held a bullpen session on Sunday and threw 144 pitches to Shinnosuke Abe. He also had a batter stand in the batter's box to get a real-game feel.
...Shun Tono has his alarm clock set to play pro-wrestler Riki Choshu's entrance music at 6:30am. The music also helped Tono get pumped for a day of practice.
...Ryota Wakiya stayed back for an hour after general practice on Sunday to work on his hitting.
...Hisayoshi Chono faced Satoshi Fukuda during BP on Sunday. He broke his bat on the first pitch he saw. Overall, he took 14 swings and managed only 1 hit (a shot of the right field wall).
...Seth Greisinger was cheering for the Saints to win the Super Bowl.
=== 2/8/2010 9:54pm JST
...Tetsuya Matsumoto got a chance to meet former Hanshin Tiger turned baseball analyst Norihiro Akahoshi on Sunday. Matsumoto is hoping to meet Akahoshi again so that he can ask him some baseball-related questions.
...Taishi Ohta hit 3 over the fence during BP on Sunday against Yuya Kubo. He also received over 1.5 hours of hitting instruction from Tatsunori Hara at the indoor training facilities and over an hour's worth of fielding practice help from Takuya Kimura.
...Takahiko Nomaguchi is hoping to make his way into the starting rotation this year. On Sunday, he threw 30 pitches during BP and faced two batters: Hayato Sakamoto - 14 pitches and 3 could-be hits; and Daijiro Tanaka - 16 pitches and 4 could-be hits.
...As mentioned yesterday, Takanobu Tsujiuchi threw 52 pitches during BP on Sunday while facing Ken Kato and Ryota Wakiya. What wasn't mentioned was that he threw 26 pitches to both players and that he gave up no hits to left-handed hitter Wakiya. And depending on whom you read, he either gave up 3 could-be hits to Kato, or 5.
