Son of Former Lotte Pitcher Watanabe Talks Physics and Pitching After Tokyo University Admission

The University of Tokyo’s “submarine ace

It was a painful blow.

On October 26, in the Tokyo Six University League game between Rikkyo University and the University of Tokyo, with a 2-1 lead and two outs in the ninth inning, the University of Tokyo’s Mukiki Watanabe (junior, Faculty of Agriculture) gave up a homerun with a runner on base. Watanabe took advantage of his failure. After the game, he wrote a reflection on his smartphone.

After the game, he wrote on his smartphone, “I’ve been thinking about my habits,” he wrote: “I’ve been thinking about the fact that I’m not going to hit the ball as hard as I used to.

Watanabe describes his own habits as follows.

I make long notes on my phone about what I noticed and what I regret. I am small (167 cm, 61 kg), so if I don’t play while thinking every day, I can’t compete with the strong hitters from other universities, many of whom have experience at the Koshien National Championships.

Watanabe is currently struggling in the league tournament this fall, and he held Hosei University to two runs and threw 151 pitches for his first win. He is the eldest son of Shunsuke Watanabe, formerly of the Lotte team and known as “Mr. Submarine. Like his father, Watanabe throws a submarine, and is expected to be the next ace of the University of Tokyo, so we would like to introduce his brainy pitching in his own words.

Watanabe’s alma mater is the prestigious Kaijo High School (Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo), which admits around 50 students to the University of Tokyo every year. However, he says that at first he was not at the level to be accepted to Tokyo University.

I was a member of the baseball team at Kaijo, but after the summer tournament of my junior year, I took a mock exam and got an E on the University of Tokyo test. I knew this was a bad idea, so I gave up my smartphone, stopped watching TV, and switched to study mode. I started over thoroughly from the basics of the first year of high school, and three months later, in October, I received a “B” grade.

I didn’t want to be criticized by people who said, ‘It’s because of my parents’ connections.

He was particular about entering the University of Tokyo.

There were two reasons. First, I wanted to play baseball at the high level of the six Tokyo universities. The second reason was that I didn’t want to go to a private university and receive unjustified criticism for having parents’ connections.

Watanabe, who excelled in science-related subjects, was accepted into the University of Tokyo’s Science Department II and went on to study at the Faculty of Agriculture. His approach to baseball is also extremely logical, as is his science background.

Until high school, I was an orthodox overthrower,” he says. I studied the position of the center of gravity and the method of rotation from the standpoint of physics, and my ball speed increased to 138 km/h, but that was the limit considering my small body. I was not at a level where I could hold off the best hitters at the six universities. So I took the plunge and switched to an underhanded approach. I had thrown underhandedly for a time before because of a shoulder injury.

He also gave much thought to underthrowing. One of the answers he came up with was “not to go up a gear.

With underhand pitching, you can’t throw a hard fastball, so you don’t need to aim for strikeouts. All you have to do is deflect the fastball away from your opponent’s target and let him hit a ground ball. If you try to control the ball by raising your pitching gear, you will lose balance in your lower body and deplete your physical strength. In the game against Rikkyo, in which I gave up a homerun, I lost my composure in a pinch and upped my game to a higher gear, and that was the cause of my defeat.

Another thing Watanabe keeps in mind is the “pitch tunnel.

If you throw a slow 100 km/h fastball and then throw a fast 125 km/h straightball through the same spot, the opponent will feel you are fast and will choke you. On the other hand, I also need to throw a lot of pitches in order to make my body learn how to throw them. Last summer and winter, I threw 600 pitches a week.

Does he ever ask his father, who also throws underhandedly, for advice?

“Not before,” he said. I would say, ‘The advice of my father, who has achieved results as a pro, is the answer. There is no room for argument, so I have to follow his advice. I like to think for myself. Now that I am a responsible third-year student, I have recently started to refer to my father’s advice on how to time hitters.

As for his future, he says he has no plans.

Of course, I aspire to be a pro, but I understand that I don’t have the ability to be a pro. I want to become a pitcher who has high expectations for the future and who will be called upon by the pros.

With his well-thought-out pitching, Watanabe will be aiming for the University of Tokyo’s first win in eight years next spring.

From the November 22/29, 2024 issue of FRIDAY