“The Deeper the Darkness, the Better” — Yanagimachi Reflects After Winning Interleague MVP

The weekly magazine report is complete nonsense

“Before every practice, I always start with tee batting using this bat. It’s my routine. With just one swing, I can tell immediately whether my condition is good or bad. It’s an indispensable item for me.”

Holding the bat as he speaks is SoftBank’s Tatsuru Yanagimachi (28), who hit a league-best .397 batting average in this year’s interleague play, earning MVP honors and making a name for himself. The bat he grips has a flat surface—similar to a cricket bat. Shohei Ohtani is also said to have used one last season to adjust his swing. Yanagimachi began using it in late April this year.

“I saw my senior, Ukyo Shuto, using it and borrowed it—that’s how it started. Practicing with the flat surface lets me check whether my swing path is correct.”

He was originally known as the “Keio Genius Batter,” an accomplished player who roamed the outfield and piled up hits in the Tokyo Big6 Baseball League.

“I went on to Keio Senior High from there, but I was born and raised in Ibaraki. When my junior high team won the national Little Senior tournament, Keio reached out to me, and that’s what led me to enroll. Honestly, it’s embarrassing now, but back then I was so focused on baseball in Ibaraki that I didn’t even know what ‘Keio’ was! (laughs)”

Although he never made it to Koshien with Keio Senior High, at Keio University he was immediately selected as a regular starter upon admission. He started every single league game for four years—an achievement at Keio not seen since Yoshinobu Takahashi (former Yomiuri Giants). His 113 career hits rank tied for 13th in the history of the prestigious league.

Then came a certain weekly magazine article, which reported things like, “During his university days, he prepared for the possibility of not turning pro by actively job hunting and even secured a tentative offer from a major advertising agency.” A fresh, good-looking Keio boy like him might well look dashing in a suit—but when pressed on the subject, the usually cool Yanagimachi burst into laughter.

“That’s complete nonsense. I never even job-hunted. I was determined to go pro and gave it everything I had.”

“My spirit was completely broken.”

He advanced along an elite path anyone would envy, building results step by step before leaping into the professional world. But from there, he says, it was a series of hardships.

In the spring of his rookie year (2020), he was immediately baptized into the world of pro baseball. It happened in a preseason practice game against Lotte’s Atsuki Taneichi. He couldn’t connect with the fastball—couldn’t even take a swing. Two straight strikeouts left him utterly defeated.

“He’s a year younger than me, but he had already joined the pros out of high school and won eight games the previous year. In college, sure, there were pitchers who threw 150 km/h, but in the pros, the quality was on a completely different level.”

To overcome this, practice was essential—but Yanagimachi didn’t just swing blindly. He devoted himself to self-analysis, carefully organizing his thoughts before taking on the challenge.

“After I turned pro, my spirit was completely broken. I spent almost my entire first two years in the minors. In my third year I finally started appearing in first-team games, and even earned more starts, but I still couldn’t reach the required number of plate appearances. Then in the offseason the team brought in reinforcements, and the next year I was back in the minors.

I just couldn’t find my rhythm. But batting is the same way. No hitter can keep hitting forever in peak condition. You stop hitting, then you think things through, find something to fix, practice, start hitting again and repeat.”

It was this cycle of progress and setbacks that proved he was steadily growing as a pro, culminating in this year’s Interleague Play, where he even led the race for the Pacific League batting title.

But after league play resumed, he fell into a slump—hitless in 29 consecutive plate appearances, and his average dropped into the .290 range.

“Manager (Hiroki) Kokubo told me this was actually a chance to shed my skin. To grow, you have to face extremes head-on. That’s why he said, the deeper the darkness, the better. And that I had to overcome it myself. If you reach for someone else’s helping hand, it’s only a temporary fix—you’ll just end up struggling again. That’s why I’m confronting it thoroughly. Even when I go home and play with my one-and-a-half-year-old child, I don’t try to forget the bad moments—I stay immersed in baseball.”

Even amid the struggle, there were at-bats where he managed a hit he could be satisfied with: “Even when cornered, I realized I could still produce that kind of swing.” He once thought of himself as weak under pressure, but recently he’s been able to say with confidence, “The bigger the moment, the stronger my focus becomes.”

“I don’t need to chase the batting title—if I get it as a result, great. But nothing good comes from greed. Staying focused on getting that one hit in front of me, step by step—that’s who I am.”

Yanagimachi is a key man in the second half of the season. For the Hawks to win the championship, his resurgence will be essential.

From the August 8-15, 2025, issue of “FRIDAY”