[스포티비뉴스=신원철 기자] The Japanese baseball team has already lost one ‘top gun’ before the final roster is confirmed. This is because the captain of Softbank, Yuki Yanagita, stopped participating in the WBC beforehand.
Yanagita is a complete hitter with a career batting average of 0.315, 238 homers, 158 stolen bases and an OPS of 0.960 for 12 years until last year. He had stolen double digits for six consecutive years before injury reduced base stealing attempts in three 20 home run seasons and three 30 home run seasons. Why did such a star declare his absence from WBC?
Summarizing Japanese media reports from last year, Yanagita opined that the regular season could be difficult if he started with 100% at WBC in early March. The honor of being selected for the national team and participating in international competitions is important, but this year, as captain, I thought I should do my best for my team. Most of all, I didn’t like the results of last year’s .275 batting average and 24 homers.
Yanagita attributes this slowness to a failure of weight control. He said he gained weight when he woke up to the taste of sugar, which he would not normally have eaten, and that this made it difficult to manage his condition during the term.
To be precise, it happened after entering a self-isolation facility after being infected with Corona 19 during personal training before last season. Special meals are not provided for professional baseball players, so there was not enough food, and I got food from outside through an acquaintance. These foods were, of course, snacks such as cup noodles, fruit sandwiches, and glutinous rice cakes.
Yanagita looked back, saying, “I didn’t exercise and just ate. Originally, I wasn’t the type to enjoy sweets, but I opened my eyes to sweetness. So I gained weight, and even after I came out, my habits changed, so I kept working on sweets.” Even if you increase aerobic exercise such as cycling, your weight did not return.
Yanagita said, “I usually maintain 90-91kg, but in the opening, I weighed 103kg. I was not trying to gain weight, I just got fat.” In addition, he fell into a vicious circle of relieving the stress he got from bad grades at the beginning of the term with sweets. Softbank, where Yanagita left an unusual performance, lost first place in the regular season with a loss in the last game. It also failed to advance to the Japanese series.
This year, I tried to correct my eating habits by fasting for a week. Yanagita, who said, “I can’t afford to rest if my batting average is in the 207 cents range,” showed satisfaction by adjusting his weight to 95kg at the start of the camp.
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