Is it also the appearance of Japanese international left-hander secret weapons?
Japan’s surprise left-hander Ryuhei Sotani (24, Orix) blocked the Korean national baseball team’s batting lineup with a perfect score.
The South Korean national baseball team, led by head coach Ryu Ji-hyun, is playing the first game of the 2025 NAVER K-BASEBALL SERIES (K-BASEBALL SERIES) against Japan at Tokyo Dome, Japan on the 15th. This series is aimed at preparing for the 2026 World Baseball Classic (WBC), which will take place in March next year.
사진 확대 Photo (Tokyo, Japan) = Courtesy of Yonhap News
And Sotani, who started as a starting pitcher for the Japanese national team, made a surprise pitch and impressed. Sotani, who started as a starting pitcher on the day, threw two strikeouts in three innings, making a perfect all-out pitch against nine South Korean batters and was replaced by Daisuke Moriura in the fourth inning.
Initially, the personality of a surprise starting pitcher was strong. As this tournament is a warm-up match, Japan has set up a samurai Japan list with domestic players excluding major leaguers such as Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto (LA Dodgers). Ito Hiromi (Nipponham), another ace of the national team, was also left out due to accumulated fatigue.
Nevertheless, it was considered a rather surprising choice for Sotani, a 24-year-old young pitcher, to start Game 1 against South Korea at Tokyo Dome in Japan.
Sotani is a pitcher who has not played three seasons in the Japanese Professional Baseball (NPB) since 2023. He recorded 16 wins and 21 losses with a 3.25 ERA (266 innings 96 earned runs) in 51 games, and this season, he pitched in 21 games in the 2025 season with an 8-8 record and a 4.01 ERA.
When I looked at the lid, Sotani’s actual pitching was excellent enough that the Japanese national team confidently pitched as the starting pitcher for the first game. As a left-hander, Sotani showed a clean pitch with a fast fastball in the mid-150km range, a slider against left-handed batters, and a fork ball against right-handed batters.
사진 확대 Photo (Tokyo, Japan) = Courtesy of Yonhap News
From the first inning, Sotani started the inning with three outs, striking out Shin Min-jae on a ground ball to shortstop, Ahn Hyun-min on a fly ball to center field, and Song Sung-moon on a swing and miss. The pitching of aggressively catching the ball count with good fastball control was impressive.
From the second inning, I used the breaking ball more actively. Sotani grounded out Park Dong-won and finished the second inning with three outs after dealing with Roh Si-hwan, who was a difficult opponent, with a foul fly in the eighth pitch and Moon Bo-kyung in the left field.
Sotani’s pitching in the third inning was also clean. After striking out the first batter Moon Hyun-bin with a swing and miss, Kim Joo-won hit a fly ball to left field, Park Hae-min grounded out to second base, and pitched three consecutive three-out perfect pitches.
The number of pitches was 44 pitches until the third inning, but manager Hirokazu Ibata of the Japanese national team replaced the Japanese national team pitcher with Moriura from the fourth inning.
In the end, this choice, which made Sotani, served as a poison to the Japanese national team. South Korea, which was blocked by Sotani until the third inning with a perfect score, scored three runs at once with a back-to-back home run that tied Ahn Hyun-min’s two-run and Song Sung-moon’s solo after Shin Min-jae’s first hit against Moriura, who came up in the fourth inning.
South Korea is leading 3-1 as Japan’s attack is underway in the bottom of the fourth inning.
[Kim Wonik, MK Sports Reporter]