Baseball: A Two-Way Player-Chapter 418 - 64: All-Star

After chatting with her fellow enthusiasts in the group for a while, Akane Kujo followed the link to open the official voting website for Nippon Professional Baseball and checked the latest voting situation:

On the Central League side, Balentien of the Yakult Swallows secured the top popularity spot with over 300,000 votes. This Dutch player has consecutively won the Central League home run title for two years and has a high chance of defending it this year. It’s understandable why he’s so popular; other positions are occupied by well-known stars like Maeda Kenta, Abe Shinjiro, and Maru Yoshihiro.

She quickly swiped down to the Pacific League section, and the latest voting results caught Akane Kujo’s eyes: In the pitcher position, Tanaka Masahiro still ranked first with over 150,000 votes. However, unlike a few days ago when he was way ahead, Lin Guanglai’s name has moved up to second in the pitcher position, trailing Tanaka by less than a thousand votes—the explosive performance during the Interleague Play indeed gave Lin Guanglai’s popularity another significant boost.

If the current growth rate continues, Lin Guanglai will soon surpass Tanaka Masahiro, becoming the most popular pitcher in the 2013 All-Star Game!

Just thinking about the possibility of seeing player Lin in person at her doorstep, Akane Kujo couldn’t help but fantasize, disregarding the strange glances from passersby.

"There’s a little over half a month until the All-Star Game, I need to go to the SoftBank website and buy more support materials..."

Akane Kujo thought to herself.

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After two matches against the Giant Team, the 2013 Interleague Play temporarily concluded: apart from the SoftBank Team winning the Interleague Play championship by narrowly surpassing the Rakuten Golden Eagles within the same league, the Pacific League also achieved another overwhelming victory in the Interleague Play with a record of 80 wins, 60 losses, and 4 ties.

Although the Central League is much more popular, the competitive level has always been stronger in the Pacific League—in the many years since the Interleague Play’s establishment in 2005, only last year’s Yomiuri Giants from the Central League claimed victory, while the rest of the titles were all dominated by Pacific League teams.

After the Interleague Play schedule ended, the players finally welcomed a long-awaited short holiday:

Considering the outstanding performance of the entire first team during the Interleague Play, the generous and benevolent Manager Akiyama waved his hand and gave all first-team players two days off to relieve themselves from the tense and exciting schedule and relax their nerves a bit.

Taking advantage of the two-day holiday, Lin Guanglai chose to temporarily stay away from anything related to baseball, taking a good rest while contemplating the subsequent training and match schedules.

As the show-stealing rookie from the first third of the season, many teams have exponentially increased their attention to Lin Guanglai, and data teams have started analyzing and studying his technical characteristics—professional baseball is a sport requiring continuous evolution from players. Otherwise, if researched thoroughly by big data, a player might face a career downturn.

The leisurely holiday passed quickly, and soon it was time to return from break; Lin Guanglai boarded the bus to the dome punctually, arriving at the training place before official training began.

"Guanglai, congratulations—making the All-Star directly in your rookie year, truly impressive!"

"Too bad you’re too young, otherwise I’d definitely get you drunk next time, hahahaha..."

As soon as Lin Guanglai walked into the changing room, he received congratulatory greetings from the coaches and veterans in the team; shortly after, when all members reached the changing room, with Manager Akiyama leading, the ball club also held a small celebration for the SoftBank Team players who made the All-Star.

Including Manager Akiyama Koji, who was selected as a coach, SoftBank Team had a total of 7 people selected:

Matsuda Naohiro, who received both fan and player votes; 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Lin Guanglai, the starting pitcher selected by fan votes;

Nakagawa Seiichi, picked through player voting;

and Iwasaki Sho, Chika Huangda, and Hasegawa Yuya recommended jointly by three coaches.

Besides the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, which had 10 people selected, SoftBank Team had the most number of selections—the disclosed voting numbers show that Lin Guanglai actually had a chance to receive double votes, but regrettably, participating as a pitcher in player mutual selection, he narrowly lost to Tanaka Masahiro.

Additionally, this year’s All-Star has the most first-year rookies selected since the event began—7 in total, with five from the Central League and two from the Pacific League. The ’Three Big High School Pitchers’ selected in the 2012 draft meeting, Lin Guanglai, Ohtani Shohei, and Fujinami Jintaro, were all selected.

From this, it’s apparent that the 2012 class truly deserves to be called the much-anticipated draft year, with top-notch university graduate and high school graduate players across the board.

With the end of the Interleague Play and the dust settled on the All-Star selections, Nippon Professional Baseball tournaments also returned to their regular intra-league confrontations—after the holiday, SoftBank Team’s first game will be an expedition to Miyagi to challenge the currently two-game-ahead Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles.

As mentioned earlier, due to the Pacific League’s overwhelming victory during the Interleague Play, the Pacific League’s internal rankings were relatively unaffected:

Apart from the Seibu Lions dropping to 4th due to poor Interleague Play results, the standings of other teams barely changed with little difference in the number of wins between teams—even between the top-ranked Chiba Lotte and the bottom-ranked Orix Buffaloes, there’s only a difference of 8 wins, an equivalent of two series.

Looking at the current situation in the Pacific League, by September and October, when it truly comes to the season’s end sprint, every game might become a head-on, bayonet-tinted hard-fought battle.

Riding the tailwind of the Interleague Play victory, SoftBank Team players, returning to Pacific League internal games, continued exhibiting their excellent competitive state:

In the three-game series at Miyagi Stadium against the Rakuten Team, Akiyama Koji deployed the main forces, including aces Lin Guanglai and Shetsu Shou, to participate in all matches.

The first to take the field, Lin Guanglai delivered a quality start with 7 innings, 8 strikeouts, allowing 2 runs, and an earned run—this game held significant meaning for Lin Guanglai.

This victory was not only the 8th win of his rookie season but also highlighted his name prominently on several pitching data leaderboards:

As of now, Lin Guanglai leads in both strikeout numbers and ERA rankings, with only Tanaka Masahiro, undefeated so far, ahead in wins; in other words, Lin Guanglai is currently a bona fide "pitcher dual crown" in Nippon Professional Baseball—although there might be some benefit to being a rookie not yet fully researched, it’s still an impressive achievement for a high school player.

This victory further closed Lin Guanglai’s gap with Tanaka Masahiro on the wins leaderboard and brought him closer to achieving double-digit wins in his rookie season.

As a veteran player and last year’s Eiji Sawamura Award recipient, Shetsu Shou did not let Lin Guanglai outshine him; on the second day, he also delivered an excellent performance with 7 innings, allowing 2 runs, securing his 6th win of the season, and ensuring SoftBank Team’s victory in the series early.

Oonari Kenji, replacing the season-ending Fanzu Kazuhiro and serving as the team’s third rotation, also relatively smoothly completed his task with solid support from the strong batting lineup. Although his start allowing 5 runs wasn’t as impressive as the two aces, helping the team to enough innings was already satisfying enough—in this series, SoftBank Team swept its direct competitor Tohoku Rakuten with a 3-0 record, taking the critical battle and climbing to second place in the Pacific League standings.

Akiyama Koji hopes that the current excellent state of the team continues—if everything goes as he wishes, he is confident in leading this team further:

League championship, climax series victory, or even Nippon Series victory—these are all things he can dream about...