Japan said Friday it will send Masato Morishita to the mound for the Tokyo Games baseball final against the United States when the host nation seeks to win its first official Olympic gold medal in the sport.
The 24-year-old Morishita, the 2020 rookie of the year of Japan's Central League, will be pitching for the second time in these Olympics. He allowed two runs over five innings in Samurai Japan's 7-4 group-stage win over Mexico last Saturday.
"I want to focus on one batter at a time," Morishita said. "I'll be OK if I'm able to execute my pitches."
Japan won the 1984 Olympic baseball tournament, before the sport joined the core Olympic program in 1992. It was dropped after 2008, and added by local organizers for Tokyo.
"We've got one more to go," Samurai Japan manager Atsunori Inaba said at a team practice at Tokyo's Ota Stadium. "I want every one of us to compete so that we have no regrets."
Although cleanup hitter Seiya Suzuki has struggled, the team's leadership indicated there would be no big changes to the batting order.
The United States, who advanced to the final after beating South Korea 7-2 in Thursday's semifinal, will send Nick Martinez to the mound. Martinez plays in Japan's Pacific League for the SoftBank Hawks.
Japan is currently undefeated in the tournament, having won both its group-stage games before advancing to the gold medal game with wins over the U.S. and South Korea, two teams Japan hadn't beaten in Olympic play since 1996.
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