Yakult’s “3rd Consecutive Year DRA1 Injured and Out” Angers Amateur Baseball World… “Don’t Just Put It Away as Bad Luck! Will it affect the draft?

For the third year in a row, a DRA1 is ……

New manager Takahiro Ikeyama (60) is watching Yakult draft pick Ayukazu Matsushita (Ayuto, 22) with mixed feelings.

On February 8, Matsushita appeared at a live BP session at Urasoe Stadium (Okinawa Prefecture), where the Yakult baseball team is holding its camp, and immediately showed glimpses of his big talent with a 120-meter shot.

This is the first camp for Matsushita, who is in his first year as a professional baseball player. It is not hard to imagine that he is tired both mentally and physically. When Matsushita and Takumi Ishii (23), the sixth overall pick in the draft, were excused from the general practice menu on February 4 during the first camp session, it was thought to be in consideration of their fatigue.

It is cold in Okinawa this year, with highs in the low teens and even single digits at night. In Urasoe, even when the weather is clear, strong winds blow through, so the temperature is much lower than the numbers suggest. Some teams took measures against the cold, such as preparing braziers on the ground and catering hot food for lunch, but the risk of injury was higher than in previous years.

Matsushita explained that he had been removed from the entire practice session because of a muscle sprain in his left hamstring. The team leaders are lamenting the bad luck of the rookie, saying, ‘Another rookie injury?

This was the third consecutive year that a DRA1 rookie had an injury before the start of the season.

Yuto Nakamura (23), a DRA 1 rookie in 2024, complained of upper body discomfort during his rookie training camp, and was forced to start the spring training camp with the second team. The year before, Dora 1 in 2023 Dora1 Kota Nishidate (24) was also judged to have upper body discomfort during a joint training session for newcomers, and he concentrated on making adjustments with no throws. Still unable to fully recover, he underwent Tommy John surgery on September 20 of the same year and was signed to a developmental contract in the off-season. I can only think that he is cursed. ……

The leaders of the amateur baseball world, who have sent their valuable pupils to the professional baseball world, were angered by this tragedy.

Yakult has a lot of injuries even among its mainstay players. The Internet makes fun of Yakult as a “Yakult war hospital. Compared to other teams, Yakult seems to lack the attitude of taking thorough care of the players’ bodies. There are injuries that can be prevented as a team. I think it is natural for parents to want to send their children to a team that will take good care of them. I would like to see a review of the management system.

The baseball teams are not sitting idly by.

If the situation continues as is, it will have a major impact on the next season’s draft and beyond. The Yakult baseball team is in the midst of a rebuilding phase, and this could be a major blow to them. In fact, the team has had to put the brakes on the young players so that they don’t overdo it. We know that we cannot escape from the B class without hard training. ……

For the past few years, Yakult has been plagued by a string of injuries to key players and has not been able to field its best lineup. The first step toward rebuilding the team will be to “get rid of the Yakult hospital.