Baseball: A Two-Way Player-Chapter 460 - 83: A Do-or-Die Battle

"Ah, is it raining?"

That morning, when Lin Guanglai woke up from a deep sleep and walked onto the balcony of his room, he unexpectedly discovered such a scene.

At the end of October in Miyagi, a torrential rain suddenly began to pour down. Judging by the current state, it wasn’t a small rain either, and it didn’t seem like it would stop anytime soon—considering that Miyagi Stadium is an open-air stadium, it looks like today’s game with the Rakuten Team will likely be postponed...

"Wait, if today’s game is postponed due to weather, doesn’t that mean... no, I must go find Manager Akiyama now!"

Staring at the relentless weather outside the window, something seemed to suddenly occur to Lin Guanglai. He quickly tidied up a bit and then hurriedly ran out of the room.

"Knock, knock knock—" Standing outside Akiyama Koji’s room, Lin Guanglai gently knocked on the door with the back of his fingers; almost at the moment when Akiyama Koji’s sleepy face appeared, Lin Guanglai shouted out the words he had been holding in his heart:

"Manager, please reconsider—let me start tomorrow’s game!!!"

After being led into his room by the manager, Lin Guanglai cautiously surveyed the surroundings with his eyes: the room was relatively tidy, but the crumpled paper balls scattered on the floor by Akiyama Koji indicated that the SoftBank team’s manager wasn’t in a good mood at the moment.

Lin Guanglai could certainly understand his mood: after all, for SoftBank, this was the critical moment of life and death in their season.

After Lin Guanglai helped the team tie the series with a miraculous performance of 6 scoreless innings and 3 consecutive home runs, SoftBank suffered defeats in the next two matchups:

In the second game of the series, Rakuten’s players not only didn’t suffer a morale collapse as Akiyama Koji had anticipated, but actually performed so differently that they could be described as "two different teams" compared to the first game, especially after shedding the burden of being "undefeated."

Under the aggressive onslaught from the opposite side, Shetsu Shou, who had shown signs of a slight decline this season, ultimately couldn’t withstand the pressure—in this game, he managed to complete 6 innings but allowed 4 runs; even though the lineup showed strong determination in the later stages of the game, SoftBank still lost this crucial match with a score difference of 3-5.

In the third game of the series that took place last night, Rakuten could send out a peak-performance technique-oriented pitcher like Manabu Mima to start; while for SoftBank, after losing Oonari Kenji, they only had Fanzu Kazuhiro as a barely usable option.

The massive disparity in pitching roster naturally influenced the final outcome of this game:

Though Manabu Mima was nominally a technique pitcher, inclined to use breaking balls, his fastball velocity wasn’t inferior to many power pitchers either, topping out at over 150 km/h, only limited in use due to the ball’s quality—even so, his rich variety of pitches was a formidable challenge for SoftBank’s hitters.

The 34-year-old Fanzu Kazuhiro, suitable for regular rotations and experienced enough for regular season games, struggled to keep up with the intense competition of do-or-die playoffs, having already passed his prime.

The final score of the third game was 7-2. Hosting at home, Rakuten Team clinched another victory, achieving a two-game winning streak against SoftBank; these two victories also meant one thing:

With an inherent one-win advantage as Pacific League champions, Rakuten Team had already brought themselves to the brink of clinching the series—winning just one more game in the upcoming matchups would secure their place in the Japan Series, where they would face off against the Yomiuri Giants, who had recently swept the Hiroshima Toyo Carp with a 4-0 score in a previous series.

As for the trailing SoftBank, they were already on the edge of the cliff; if they still wished to strive for the goal of reaching the Japan Series, they couldn’t afford any mistakes in the upcoming games—any misstep might shatter their entire season’s efforts.

To be honest, considering SoftBank’s performance this season, Akiyama Koji knew that his team making it this far was already quite fortuitous—if not for Lin Guanglai’s star-level performance in his rookie year, they might have ended their season fishing at home right after the regular games.

But with the game being played to this point, even if the possibility of continuing forward was so slim it was almost negligible, Akiyama Koji still didn’t want to give up—the crumpled paper balls strewn across the floor were also part of the various plans he’d made over the last few days.

At this stage, the most critical question facing SoftBank Team and Akiyama Koji now was: for the fourth game of the series, who should be chosen as the starting pitcher?

If the game proceeded as scheduled tonight, Akiyama Koji supposedly wouldn’t have any other choices and would most likely pick someone moderately reliable from the remaining available starting pitchers, leaving the rest to the batting line and fate. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

But the appearance of this timely rain, however, opened up some different possibilities for him: with a full day today and the time before tomorrow’s game, it’s been 4 days since the first game of the series—though this interval hasn’t met the postseason standard of "5 days rest" for starting pitchers, it’s definitely enough to attempt getting back on the mound.