"I wanted to improve my batting and blocking, which are my weaknesses, and most importantly, I wasn't able to maintain a good batting average, so I was playing in the winter league hoping to improve in that area."

Lotte's Konoshin Tomiyama participated in the Japan Winter League Advance 2025 from November 22nd after the end of the Miyakonojo autumn training camp, and worked to improve his skills through actual games.

In terms of batting, he tried various different ways of timing his shots last season, but I wonder if he was able to find the one that worked for him during the winter league.

"Even when I was doing well during a game and thought this was it, there were times when I couldn't keep it up or things would go wrong halfway through. If I could understand more about making adjustments when things go wrong and getting back to normal, I don't think there would be so many ups and downs this season. There were a lot of sudden drops and rises, so I would like to be able to keep the ups and downs consistent."

After the winter league ended, he returned home once, and then from January 4th, he began voluntary training in Kamogawa with teammates Tatsuhiro Tamura and Toshiya Sato.

In an interview on September 23rd of last year, Toyama said, "I get advice from Tamura and Kakinuma, and they teach me how to use different types of pitches, so I write it down in a notebook and keep it in mind so I can use it in the next game."

When asked again what Tamura had taught him during the season, he said, "There is no correct answer when it comes to pitching, but there are times when I have doubts, so Tamura will tell me about anything he is unsure about during the game.If I don't have any basis for something and don't understand, he will explain it to me thoroughly.He is best at using the curveball, so I would ask him about that during the season and he would teach me while watching the games."

I wonder what he learned from Tamura during his voluntary training period.

"It's basically about the technical aspects, so I went there primarily to learn about catcher, so I focused on blocking, catch and throwing."

While training on his own with Tamura and Sato, what difference did he feel between himself and Tamura and Sato, who play on the first team?

"I've been training with the Lotte catcher during my voluntary training, and I don't have my own style yet, so I'm trying out a lot of different things. (Sato) Toshiya and Tamura have their own style. Tam and Toshi have different ways of doing things, so I think they're losing out because they haven't found their own style yet. I've also seen them batting up close, and I can see their strength. (Sato) Toshiya has power and can hit the ball far, so I think I'm still far behind in that area."

Is Toyama himself still in the process of creating his own style?

"Well, rather than trying to come up with my own style, I'd like to listen to a lot of stories and hopefully shape them into something."

Toyama's strength is his high rate of preventing stolen base, which he attributes to his strong arm. "When I'm throwing a fastball, I can throw it in my own style, but when it's breaking ball or a one-bounce, I can't throw it out, so when I'm throwing breaking ball, I try to throw a wild pitch so that even if I catch it and a base is stolen base, I can still throw it in the same style. I want to continue practicing like that."

Spring training camp is about to begin, and Ishigaki will be starting with the team. "I'll start with the second team at training camp, but I think there will be more actual games to work on my shortcomings, so I'll be looking into it and making sure I put what I've done in my personal training into practice so that I can give it my all from the very first game of training camp. I also want to play in the first team in the exhibition games, so I want to make this season a better one than last year." He wants to make full use of what he's learned from the winter league and his personal training in his third season.

Interview and text by Yuta Iwashita