Nippon-Ham 's Koki Kitayama: "baseball world is changing." Fellow alumnus Yoshinobu Yamamoto becomes the world's best with bodyweight training | Pacific League League.com

Nippon-Ham-Koki Kitayama’ Nobutaka Kitayama: “baseball world is changing” – Fellow alumnus Yoshinobu Yamamoto becomes the world’s best with bodyweight training

Sports Hochi

2025.11.4(火) 06:15

Kitayama playing catch (photographer: Haruki Kawakami)

Nippon-Ham (Koki Kitayama pitcher), 26, of the Dodgers, vowed on March 3 to make the WBC team next year by using “Yoshinobu’s Way of Adjustment. He and Yamamoto, the Dodgers’ MVP in the World Series, have been training together in Osaka City, and Yamamoto’s trainer Osamu Yada (66), whom Yamamoto places great trust in, has also been teaching him. He is my target player. I don’t want to lose to a player who has stood on the world stage and won the MVP award. I want to get closer to that level eventually.

As a student of trainer Yada, Yamamoto’s consecutive pitching wasn’t a surprise. Regarding the right-handed pitcher, who threw 96 pitches in Game 6 and 34 in Game 7, Yamamoto said, “In Yada’s teachings, throwing balls doesn’t make your body sick; rather, throwing balls makes your body move better, and you’re in better condition after pitching.” He explained that Yamamoto can handle consecutive pitching. He agreed with the training method of using bodyweight training instead of weight training, saying, “He’s demonstrated at the pinnacle of the world that it’s not just about training hard and throwing fast balls. I think this will change the world of baseball.”

The Samurai Japan training camp will begin on April 6. reliever He was a starter in last season’s Premier 12 tournament and has earned the trust of manager Ibata. I want to be able to play anywhere. I want to be able to play anywhere. I want to make a strong appeal so that I can be selected at a higher level,” he said. The fastest 157-kilogram right-hander, who won nine games this season, will be a member of the strongest Samurai team in history. （He will be a member of the strongest Samurai team in the history of the game.)