Summary
Seidou survives the third inning with no lost runs even though Sawamura took some hits and even walked the fourth batter. In the bottom half, Yura Sougou’s ace pitcher gets switched in.
On the sidelines, Hachiouji’s players are looking in on the game and seemed surprised that it is just the 3rd inning, commenting that Seidou should really be wanting to do something soon with the score looking that way. However, Yurakou’s ace pitcher successfully shuts out Kawamochi, Kominato and Shirasu in succession.
In the fourth inning, Miyuki tells Sawamura that he would be asking for more cutter-kai and two-seamers and less changeups. He does comment to himself that Sawamura needs to get back on his rhythm and change things around soon or things won’t be looking good at all. Unfortunately, Sawamura ends up giving a foul walk, his fourth in this game, to the 8th batter after just one out.
Kataoka calls for a timeout. The crowd comments that if Seidou is unable to defend their inning, it will eventually affect their offense, and that Sawamura is too tensed to play his usual - a pattern that precedes the downfall of a strong team in the game.
Sakaki notes that at this point, only Kawakami has been warming up at the bullpen while Furuya hasn’t even started. He thinks Kataoka should not have focused too far ahead, only to trip over here.
Meanwhile, the audience is surprised that Seidou has decided to switch out the pitcher. The chapter ends with Kawakami running into the field and Sakaki is visibly shocked at the turn of events.
Originally published in Shuukan Shounen Magazine Issue #8, 2019.
All images are copyrighted by Terajima Yuuji / Kodansha.
Scoreboard
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 計 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 由良 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | ||||||
| 青道 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Thoughts
As suspected, Kataoka finally switches out Sawamura based on his inability to get into his regular pitching rhythm. Sakaki’s reaction at the end of the chapter seemed to imply that Kataoka’s decision was something he did not expect from him. He probably knew how attached Kataoka is to an ace’s role to carry the game and assumed that he would only consider using either Sawamura or Furuya in this match. And since Furuya isn’t warmed up at all, he probably expected Sawamura to play for more innings.
I guess this shows that Kataoka’s past experiences and his time observing other teams during the off season has paid off in his growth as a coach. First, with the revised batter order (though Ochiai also had a hand in that) and now with his lack of hesitation to switch out the ace pitcher based on his performance. I have to say that Sakaki’s timely appearance and Seidou coincidentally getting matched up with Yurakou probably means we can expect the author to use this match to further highlight Kataoka’s growth as a coach.
That aside, what I’m really looking forward to with the current turn of events is that Kawakami finally gets an opportunity to show his “ace” moment on the mount. We have been seeing Kawakami striving hard in the background trying to “catch up” to the two ace rivals but not getting enough opportunities to stand on the mount. Miyuki has acknowledged him as the ace of their generation so I think we can definitely expect to see some crazy growth in this match now that he is in his final year of high school.
Personally, I adored the third years from the previous generation - they were really cool and admirable and was the firm foundation that led the team forward during all the difficult moments. So far, we haven’t seen the same qualities exhibited by the current batch. Granted, we’ve known them as the second years so it’s hard to perceive them in a different way. However, this is also just the start of the summer tournament and there will be plenty of opportunities coming up!
As a side observation, I noticed that Sawamura’s cap has some characters written on it. Looks to me like it says “青道魂” but I could be wrong…