Kenta Imamiya Hits 400 Sacrifice Bunts—Here’s the Strategy That Saved His Career

A bunt demands almost 100% success

“Bunting is a battle against fear. The basics are to hold the bat so that the pitcher’s release point, the bat, and your eyes are all aligned in a straight line. If you get scared and pull your hands away from your face, you’re more likely to fail. In other words, you have to deaden a ball that’s essentially coming straight at your face.

I’ve even laid down a bunt off Shohei Ohtani back when he was with the Fighters, but his pitches had a totally different level of intensity compared to others.”

So says Kenta Imamiya (34) of SoftBank, who reached 400 career sacrifice bunts this August.

He continues: “Hitters are considered great if they can bat .300, but when it comes to bunting—something you do within the same at-bat—you’re basically expected to be perfect. You have to fight the pressure too. The collective sigh from tens of thousands of people in the stadium when you fail it stings. Inside I’m thinking, ‘It’s not that easy, okay?’ (laughs) But I try to see it as the flip side of the expectation—people believe Imamiya will get it done.”

Above Imamiya in the all-time sacrifice bunt rankings are only three players: Masahiro Kawai (Giants), the world record holder with 533; Ken Hirano (Seibu); and Shinya Miyamoto (Yakult).

But Imamiya is not only a bunt master. His powerful swing also thrills fans. This season he reached 100 career home runs. The combination of 100 home runs & 400 sacrifice bunts is unprecedented not only in Japanese baseball history but is unheard of even in MLB or other leagues.

In his youth, Imamiya was highly regarded as a future slugger. Despite being a relatively small player at 172 cm, he hit 62 home runs in high school at Meihō High School (Oita), and as a pitcher he threw up to 154 km/h. He was a Koshien star nicknamed the “Little Giant.”

“When I entered pro baseball as a first-round draft pick, I bragged, ‘My goal is 3,000 hits.’ Given my build, I never said it out loud, but I definitely wanted to hit home runs. I thought maybe I could become the type of hitter who hits 20 in a season.”

I felt like an idiot

It didn’t take long for Imamiya to realize how naïve he had been.

“In my first games with the farm team, my spirit snapped instantly. In high school I faced guys from my own age group who later became stars—Yusei Kikuchi (Angels), Takeru Imamura (ex-Hiroshima), Daichi Osera (Hiroshima), and so on. But in pro baseball, even the pitchers in the second team made me look foolish. Even if the fastball was the same 145 km/h, the quality was totally different. The sharpness of the breaking balls was unbelievable. Talking about 3,000 hits? I felt like such an idiot.”

From childhood, Imamiya had been extremely athletic. Up through high school, he laughs, “As long as I practiced the bare minimum, I could do anything well.”
He’s not the only player who entered the pros with that natural-talent mindset.
The first real setback—and how a player overcomes it—often determines whether they succeed in a league full of prodigies.

“I was lucky that Yusuke Torigoe (now Seibu’s head coach) was the Hawks’ farm manager at the time. He taught me everything—baseball, and what it means to be a professional. He scolded me so harshly that I hated going to the stadium, but looking back, he wasn’t wrong about a single thing. Everything he taught me still helps me today. Someone like me, who tends to get carried away, needed that.”

Torigoe was also the one who told him bluntly:

“A player like you can only survive in pro baseball by mastering defense and connecting-the-lineup hitting.”

Of course, Imamiya had pride—he had been a superstar all the way through high school.

“Hearing that from Torigoe, and looking at the reality in front of me, it was obvious that unless I accepted that style as my job, I wouldn’t survive as a pro. So accepting it was actually easy.”

Determined to make a living as a steady, unflashy player, he devoted himself to defense in the farm system. That commitment eventually earned him five consecutive Golden Glove Awards at shortstop. He also turned serious attention to bunting—something he says he had done only once before turning pro—and practiced relentlessly.

By his third year he won a regular starting role. In his fourth and fifth years he posted 62 sacrifice bunts, still a Pacific League record. From his seventh year onward, he hit double-digit home runs for four straight seasons.

“When I was hitting fairly well, I got cocky. Then my batting average dropped, so I changed my mindset. I reached 100 home runs, but honestly, I think it was kind of a coincidence.”

SoftBank manager Hiroki Kokubo says that a player with 100 home runs & 400 sacrifice bunts will probably never appear again. Modern baseball often places a strong hitter in the No. 2 spot, and the Pacific League’s bunt totals have dropped by about 30% over the past decade.

The classic connect-the-lineup No. 2 hitter is now an endangered species.

But Imamiya says: “There will always be moments when bunts and connecting plays are necessary. When the manager wants that, I want to be ready to deliver. My job is to pass the baton to the big hitters—Yuki Yanagita, Hotaka Yamakawa, guys like that. I’ll probably stay that type of player until the day I retire. I’m not someone who wants to be in the spotlight anyway (laughs).”

With veterans like him anchoring the lineup, SoftBank won back-to-back Pacific League titles this season. Their goal now is their first Japan Series championship in five years.

“We lost in the Japan Series last year. All we’re thinking about is payback.”

Even on the big stage ahead, he flashed a bright smile and repeated that team victory comes first.

—From “FRIDAY” November 7, 2025 issue