Yuki Yanagita (Softbank Hawks), the ‘role model’ of Lee Jung-hoo (Kiwoom Heroes), who is about to advance to the major leagues, will not participate in the World Baseball Classic (WBC).
Japan’s ‘Sankei Sports’ reported on the 7th (Korean time), “Softbank Hawks Yuki Yanagita has resigned from the WBC team to be held in March.”
Yanagita started his professional life after being nominated by Softbank in the second round of the 2010 rookie draft, and is a player with modifiers such as ‘hitting master’ or ‘Mr. Full Swing’. Lee Jung-hoo, who plans to challenge the major leagues through the posting system after the 2023 season is over, is well known as a player who has been a role model since childhood.
Yanagita jumped to the starting lineup based on excellent performance of 11 homers, 0.295 OPS and 0.860 in 104 games in 2013, and 34 home runs and 32 stolen bases with a batting average of 0.363 in 138 games in 2016, recording his first ‘triple three’ in his debut.
Yanagita played in 1255 games, including 2 batting champions (2015, 2018), 4 on-base percentage king 4 times (2015-2018), and 1 most hits (2020), with 1379 hits, 238 homers, and 158 hits. He has a stolen base average of 0.315 and an OPS of 0.960. And he is a player who has no doubt about his skills to the extent that he helped Japan win the gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
According to ‘Sankei Sports’, Yanagita is said to have expressed his intention to focus on the 2023 season without boarding the national team. Yanagita’s performance was not bad with 120 hits, 24 home runs, 79 RBIs and a batting average of 0.275 OPS and 0.829 in 117 games last year, but it seems that he is not satisfied with his poor performance compared to previous years.
‘Sankei Sports’ said, “Yanagita conveyed his intentions to WBC coach Hideki Kuriyama and others to focus on the 2023 season.”스포츠토토 “he explained.