Will Akihiro Yuto, who hit a home run in the first game, make an impression in the exhibition games?<\/p>\n
Pacific League Insight<\/p>\n
March 2, 2026 17:41<\/p>\n
An exhibition game between Fukuoka Softbank and Tokyo Yakult will be held at MIZUHO PayPay Dome from 6:00 p.m. on March 3rd.<\/p>\n
Although Fukuoka Softbank lost to Saitama Seibu Lions in the first exhibition game on March 1st, their batting line-up was active, scoring 11 hit and 6 runs. Among them, Yuto Akihiro<\/a> made an impression with two long hits: doble and Home Run.<\/p>\n In the bottom of the third inning, he hit a ball off pitcher Rei Takahashi<\/a> that hit wall in the opposite direction, and in the bottom of the fifth inning, he hit a home run off pitcher Shinya Sugai<\/a> that flew over the right-field stands. He showed off his natural power. Last season, after joining the team via trade, he only managed a batting average of .208 in 22 games. Will he be able to perform well in the exhibition games this season and earn a spot in starting line-up?<\/p>\n Written by Kai Nagi Niwa<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Will Akihiro Yuto, who hit a home run in the first game, make an impression in the exhibition…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2302],"tags":[5,2353,2352],"class_list":{"0":"post-602967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-npb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-nippon-professional-baseball","10":"tag-npb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116163498346907689","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}