Expectations are high for young Hawks such as Tomoya Inoue and Ryuta Hirose to make an impression despite limited playing opportunities<\/p>\n
Pacific League Insight<\/p>\n
March 3, 2026 22:43<\/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 4th.<\/p>\n
Fukuoka Softbank has had veterans playing in exhibition games since the 3rd. In that game, No. 4 hitter Yuki Yanagita<\/a> recorded one hit and one Walk. Last season, he only played in 20 games due to injury, but he showed his impressive batting prowess with a .455 batting average in the Japan Series. He hopes to start the season in top condition and finish the season injury-free.<\/p>\n Also, keep an eye on how the young players will perform after the veterans drop back to the middle of the game. Tomoya Inoue<\/a>, a sixth-year player who entered the game as defense in place of Yanagi, recorded a hit to right field in his first at-bat. Ryuta Hirose<\/a> also recorded two hit despite coming in as a substitute. Will he be able to make the most of his limited playing time among the deep Fukuoka Softbank fielder?<\/p>\n Written by Kai Nagi Niwa<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Expectations are high for young Hawks such as Tomoya Inoue and Ryuta Hirose to make an impression despite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607218,"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-607217","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\/116175113409548223","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607217","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=607217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}