The day after the match against Practical Academy.
Before the start of training that day, Izumi Minoru gathered all the team members in the club activity room—he wanted to specifically review yesterday's match.
After confirming that everyone was present, Izumi Minoru slowly began, "Although we barely scraped by in yesterday's match, I think that no one, including myself, should feel proud of the victory—in fact, in my eyes, our performance yesterday was far inferior to our opponent's."
Upon hearing Izumi Minoru's serious words, those members who were still gloating over the narrow victory immediately corrected their expressions.
"I hope everyone can think about why you are gathered here—if the next matches are played in the same state as yesterday's, then don't even mention Nihon University, Sakura Meilin; even East Asia Academy and Soka in the same half of the bracket could make us completely lose."
After saying this, Izumi Minoru paused for a moment, then indicated for team manager Yuki Ono standing beside him to display yesterday's match report.
Yuki Ono nodded, unfolded the organized data in his hand, and then slowly began,
"Let's start with the basic data. In yesterday's 9-inning game, we had a total of 35 at-bats, including 10 hits and 5 RBIs."
"Practical Academy's data was also similar to ours, with 33 at-bats, 7 hits, and 3 RBIs."
"However, it is worth noting that although we had more hits, the number of times we actually hit the ball was less than Practical Academy, and most of our 10 hits were achieved in the attack during the final inning."
"Additionally, there is quite a noticeable gap in the hitting feel among different batters—the hits are basically concentrated in the central lineup led by Yasuda, Onoda, and Tsuchiya, and apart from them, the best any other lineup members did was achieving a single hit."
Faced with the rational, objective, and raw data analysis, the members outside the central batting order could no longer laugh—they all hung their heads in shame.
"Compared to the dismal offense, yesterday's defense was more polarized..." Seeing this, Yuki Ono sneaked a glance in the direction of Suzuki Kensuke, then turned his head hesitantly toward Izumi Minoru, and upon receiving his nod of approval, continued reading the remaining content:
"When Mr. Lin was on the field, the team's overall defense was... uh... not very stable, and there were several relatively basic errors, including missed catches and wild throws;"
"After Lin Guanglai took the field, the situation improved significantly, although at first, it was still a bit tense, but the performance showed a clear improvement, and there were basically no errors when facing strong thrusts."
Hearing these words from Yuki Ono, everyone present dared not make a sound—directly comparing the team's performance when the two pitchers were on the field is essentially publicly punishing Suzuki Kensuke.
As a good friend and partner, Tsuchiya Ryota looked at Suzuki Kensuke with great concern—discovering the other still sat there expressionlessly, unable to discern what he was thinking.
Izumi Minoru had a special purpose in doing this:
Yesterday's narrow victory exposed many problems for Waseda, and both offense and defense fell far short of their best state. However, compared to offense, Izumi Minoru was more concerned about the defense issue:
After all, in baseball games, batting is inherently a highly random component — in high school matches, a hitter with an average batting rate exceeding 40% can be deemed a super strong batter; and even in professional games, heavy hitters who can hit four to fifty home runs in a single season don't necessarily successfully hit every pitch safely in each at-bat.
In Izumi Minoru's view, instances of the entire team going silent like yesterday are still very rare; besides, compared to the intricate finesse of defense, hitting is something that can be quickly improved—with an appropriate increase in the proportion of batting training in the coming days, he believes it's only a matter of time before the team regains its batting form.
What really pressures Izumi Minoru is the state issue of the team's main player, Suzuki Kensuke:
From the next round, the West Tokyo Conference games will change from 1 game every 4 days to 1 game every 2 days—which means Izumi Minoru must rationally distribute the playing time of each pitcher to ensure the endurance of the starting strong pitchers.
In his initial plan, for this West Tokyo Conference, and possibly the future Koshien, the entire team would rely on Suzuki Kensuke and Lin Guanglai as the starting pitchers, with both reasonably alternating games; combined with Waseda's ample middle-relief pitcher resources, Izumi Minoru was confident that they could face off against any team in Japan.
Izumi Minoru even anticipated a backup plan for Lin Guanglai as a freshman who might not cope with the match intensity—but to his surprise, the problem actually lay with the team's main player, the usually stable performer, Suzuki Kensuke.
Players selected as the main player are ones who possess extremely high prestige within the team and are deeply trusted by all teammates, and their every move profoundly impacts the team's morale and competitive state; moreover, the nearly three-year mentor-student relationship also made it impossible for Izumi Minoru to simply abandon Suzuki Kensuke.
With no other options left, Izumi Minoru could only resort to this tactic, hoping to ignite Suzuki Kensuke's competitive spirit through this method—only in this way could Waseda go further.
Izumi Minoru fixed his gaze on Suzuki Kensuke, who was lost in thought with his head lowered, murmuring, "Kensuke... I hope you don't disappoint your teammates... or me."
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"Strike, out!"
With the umpire's ruling, the fifth-round match of the West Tokyo Conference concluded—the scoreboard on the field clearly displayed the current score:
Five innings valid, Waseda Real 10:0 Takushoku University First High School.
In this match against Takushoku University First High School, Lin Guanglai continued to start as the pitcher, and in just two innings, Waseda Real confirmed a significant 9-point lead. He was then replaced by second-year Uchida Saint, and Waseda Real easily advanced to the quarterfinals;
Meanwhile, as the team's main player, Suzuki Kensuke, still sat on the bench for the entire game.
Just after this game ended, on July 20th of the following day, in the seventh subsection match, East Asia Academy swept Engineering College with an 11:1 victory at Hachioji City Stadium, also advancing strongly to the quarterfinals.
Gazing at the members of East Asia Academy celebrating inside the field, the commentator began to look forward towards the next showdown of giants:
"With East Asia Academy advancing to the quarterfinals, this means that in the upcoming prosemifinal, we will witness a replay of last summer."
"In the next round, East Asia Academy will face the famous team of West Tokyo, Waseda Industries. Last summer, they shut out their opponents with a 10-0 victory, but unfortunately, in the next round, were swept out with a 13-1 loss to Nihon University."
"This year, will East Asia Academy be able to go further?"
After turning off the TV, Suzuki Kensuke made a decision—he walked to Izumi Minoru's office door, knocked, and then walked in.