The Japanese pitcher, Masaru Nakamura, 29, led the starting rotation of the debutants Mariachis de Guadalajara and won 8 of his 9 starts, a masterful performance that earned him to be named the Pitcher of the Year 2021 of the Mexican Baseball League .
Guadalajara was an expansion team and in the rush to find players, a strong scouting job was done in many leagues and one of those circuits was the Australian League in the 2020 winter edition.
They kept an eye on that league, from which they brought in 2 pitchers: Todd Van Steensel and Masaru Nakamura who played with the Brisbane Bandits in the 2020-21 Australian League season, with whom he had a 1-3 record and an ERA of 5.66 in 6 appearances.
KNOWN OF THE MANAGER
Luis Alonso Mendoza, sports manager of the Mariachis de Guadalajara and Masaru Nakamura were teammates for 4 seasons, between 2014 and 2017, with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters of the Japanese League and when he realized that Nakamura was playing in Australia he contacted him and signed for the team.
Nakamura finished his debut season in the LMB with a perfect 8-0 record, a 3.25 ERA, allowed 18 walks and struck out 46 batters in 52.2 innings of work.
Nakamura has one of the broadest repertoires, it has a straight, curve, slider, speed change and various types of breaking straights. His best launch is the split-finger straight.
YOUR EXPERIENCE IN JAPAN
Nakamura has 9 seasons in Nippon Professional Baseball, always with Hokkaido, with whom he had a 15-17 record in wins and losses, an ERA of 4.07 in 60 appearances, 51 as a starter and 289.1 innings of work.
Batters, when facing Nakamura, had no idea what the next pitch would be, sporting his split-finger, a fastball that drops steeply at the plate and looks like a curve, but faster, is a common pitch in the leagues. Asians, key in the repertoire of Japanese stars who have shone in the Major Leagues such as Hideo Nomo, Yu Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka, Koji Uehara, Hiroki Kuroda and Shohei Ohtani.
YOUR NUMBERS IN MEXICO
In addition to leading the Mexican Baseball League in triumphs with 8, the Japanese Mariachis de Guadalajara was the leader in percentage of wins and losses with 1,000, after finishing with an undefeated record of 8-0, he was second in WHIP with 1.10, only behind Jake Thompson (1.07), second in the opposition’s lowest batting percentage at .212, second only to Luis Escobar who had .204, he was fourth in ERA with 3.25.
Masaru Nakamura obtains the Pitcher of the Year nomination that in 2019 belonged to the Dominican César Valdez and has for the second consecutive season, a pitcher from Japan who shines in Mexican diamonds, after Yasutomo Kubo was the leader in strikeouts with 154 in 2019, playing with Bravos de León.
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