High school baseball pitch limit revision ‘stupid’

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• on Jun 04, 2023

After the end of the Golden Lion, the first King of Kings match this season, interesting stories were presented around the host newspaper.

One of them was to start a survey of coaches about the ‘limit number of pitches’. Surprisingly, most pitchers suggested an adjustment to the pitch limit. This emphasized the need to reduce the number of pitchers to some extent with the logic of ‘does it make sense that you can’t use aces in the semifinals and finals!’메이저사이트

However, the initial limit on the number of pitches was implemented due to the existence of players who could not blossom on the professional stage due to overwork in high school. By protecting the shoulders of young players, there was also a desire to show a good performance in the professional world and furthermore on the international stage. So, implementing mandatory rest days according to the number of pitches was quite encouraging. In Japan, due to the romance of Koshien, the mandatory break rule for the number of pitches has not been introduced yet.

Therefore, at least in this area, the administrative power of domestic high school baseball is slightly ahead of Japan. However, Japanese high school baseball has a characteristic that the fundamentals of the players are solid as it leads to thorough basic training. Based on the basics, monsters often appear.

That’s not to say there’s no impact from an excessive number of pitches, though. In 2018, Kosei Yoshida (Nihonham), who led the unknown Kanaashi Agricultural High School to the Koshien final, continued to pitch over 800 pitches while defending the team mound alone, but he has yet to shine as a professional. Domestic batters who faced Yoshida at the Asian Championship at the time expressed their feelings of winning 3-1 with the story, “Compared to his reputation, his pitching doesn’t seem to be very good.”

The mandated rest day criteria for current pitch counts are made fairly idealistic. Accordingly, the Asian Baseball Softball Federation and the World Baseball Softball Federation are also applying it as a standard. So, in response to the leaders’ voices regarding the request for pitch reduction, an expert voiced indirect criticism, saying, “If you ask for an increase to 110, you can also ask for an increase to 120.”

However, there is room for discussion on whether the number of pitches can be alleviated to some extent by limiting it to the ‘dream stage’ that everyone wants to step on, such as the national stage semifinals or finals. This is how to ‘reset’ the number of pitches from the quarterfinals to the extent that pitchers who have thrown more than 80 pitches until the quarterfinals are excluded. In that case, while the regulation on the number of pitches is enforced as per the regulation, it is also possible to catch the box office factor that can be seen in the semi-finals/finals of the ace.