This season, Lotte's Rikuto Yokoyama changed number to 15 and became the team's player's association president. He has become a central player for the team in both name and reality.

Last season, he achieved his long-held goal of pitching in 50 games, recording his season-highs of 20 hold, 12 saves, and 47 strike out. He pitched in 43 games in 2024, and was selected to represent Japan in the Premier 12 tournament held after the season ended. Last season, he pitched in 50 games. Last season, he was not only a relief pitcher, but also a starter and long reliever. Did he take time off from pitching during the off-season?

"I haven't done anything like that this year," he said. "I threw in 50 games, so I did cut back on the intensity of my pitching, but I didn't take any major breaks and continued training throughout December. I was also pitching well in January, so I didn't cut back drastically."

Last season, when he experienced starting midway through the season, he threw with about 80% of his strength, but he said, "I think one of the reasons I did well in the second half of last year was that I was able to throw sharp balls with about 70 to 80% of my strength, so I would like to pursue that more and more and do the same this year." This season, he will also be conscious of throwing strong balls from a relaxed form.

Regarding breaking ball, during a public training session in January, he revealed that he is working on a fast slider, saying, "I feel like I'm throwing a sweeper-type ball with a large lateral movement between 135 and 140 km/h." If he plans to throw a fast slider, does that mean he will no longer throw the 120 km/h slider he learned from his former teammate Castillo?

"Of course, I think that will be a good accent, so I will continue to throw it, but it's more like an addition to that."

Since the summer of last season, he has been able to throw his signature sinker firmly to not only left-handed hitter but also right-handed hitter, and Avg of .175 against right-handed hitter was the lowest since he established himself in the first team in 2011. (* Avg right-handed hitter in 2011: .324, 2012: .229)

"sinker was the pitch I was most confident throwing in the second half of last year, so I'd like to continue throwing it as it's a pitch that right-handed batters dislike."

Yokoyama is expected to work harder than he did last season and be the axis of the relief lineup. As a team, we always aim to win the league championship and become the No. 1 team in Japan, so I hope we can baseball perform at a high level. pitcher I hope to pitch more than 50 games for the second year in a row, win the position of guardian god, which I have set as my goal, and contribute a lot to the team's win I would like to pitch more than 50 games for the second year in a row, win the position of guardian god and contribute to the team's

Interview and text by Yuta Iwashita