Measure potential numbers that individual players have rather than baseball skills
The professional baseball draft meeting will be held on the 20th. Seibu, which announced that it would nominate No. 1 outfielder Takuya Hiruma from Waseda University, is trying to discover star players outside of scouting. On October 8, the entrance test was held for the first time at a team facility in Tokorozawa City, Saitama, and in the morning, the examinee did not use any baseball equipment. It is said that the intention was to ascertain numbers and humanity.
Assess a player’s potential through a variety of approaches. The entrance test was held after 7:00 am. The 26 people who participated in the unusual test had a slightly restless atmosphere. No bats or balls are used in the morning. We also used equipment that is rarely used, such as a watt bike that measures the maximum power of leg strength, to measure the latent values that each athlete has.
In addition to Wattbike, we measured vertical throws in medicine balls and 10 and 20 meter sprint times. Seibu’s standard is the numbers of the 2nd Army players. Kosaku Akimoto, the director of the farm and training group, revealed, “Some players had better numbers than our players.”
The knowledge and techniques of training and conditioning are new every day, and the awareness of athletes is increasing. Athletes have definitely improved their skills. However, in order not to overlook a player who has the power to become a main force on the baseball team side, it is necessary to determine the potential as well as the actual play. Mr. Akimoto explains the reason for quantifying as follows.
“We need to evaluate the type of player, their ability score, and their current location, rather than just saying, ‘Let them hit, let them throw.’”
