Pitcher Soutaro Shimauchi, who won the title of best reliever in professional baseball in Hiroshima last season, entered the bullpen on the second day of camp and worked on learning a new pitch type, the curve.
The Hiroshima camp, which is being held in Nichinan City, Miyazaki Prefecture, had to practice mostly indoors on the second day due to rain.
Pitcher Shimauchi, who won the title of best middleman last season, entered the bullpen and practiced pitching for the first time in this camp.
Pitcher Shimauchi limited himself to just two types of pitches last season, fastballs and changeups, but this year he is working on learning a new curve ball with the advice of team advisor Hiroki Kuroda.
Of the 41 pitches he threw on the 2nd, about one-third were curveballs, and while he says his performance is "still at about 10 to 20 percent," he tried out different grips and threw them to get a feel for new pitches. It was almost there.
Pitcher Shimauchi said, ``First of all, I want to play in the bullpen a lot, make it my own, and use it in actual games.I think winning the title will change the way people look at me, so I want to have a sense of responsibility and pitch in the first team for a year.'' We were talking.