Softbank Hawks and Tomohisa Ozeki pitcher, who are scheduled to start on the 31st against Rakuten Eagles (Rakuten Eagles Mobile Saikyo Park Miyagi), looked forward to pitching against Rakuten Eagles and Kenta Maeda, who will start in the same game. On this day, the starters practiced pitcher at the Mizuho Payday Dome. The left fielder, who had the highest winning percentage in the Pacific League last season, was enthusiastic about his first start of the season, saying, "I think I'm ready to focus and prepare well, rather than as usual.

Having gone through the training camp and worked on it alone, he says, "I think I have a clearer idea of what I want to do and what I need to do than last year," indicating that he has done all the preparation he can. "I want to take the initiative, to go on the offensive. I want to make sure I attack from the first pitch, from the first inning," he said, indicating that he intends to go full throttle from the start of the game.

His opponent is Maeda, who has accumulated 165 wins in his career in Japan and the US, playing for Hiroshima and the Dodgers in Major League Baseball. He expressed his delight at facing the right-hander, saying, "When I think that I'll be able to pitch against a player I watched back when I purely wanted to become a mound baseball player...how should I put it, I think I'll probably feel happy." He also mentioned that he read a book by Maeda when he was in junior high school and used it to improve his training. "I took inspiration from episodes like how he aimed at tires to improve his control. I have bullpen at home, and I've hung up small tires there to imitate him. There was also a time when I tried to imitate the way he lifted his leg. All those memories are coming back to me," he recalled, his excitement growing even stronger.