By Jim Allen,
For Lotte Marines manager Masato Yoshii, going back to school provided the insight and perspective he felt he needed for the latest chapter of his long and varied baseball career.
The 58-year-old Yoshii called an end to a 24-year pro career after the 2007 season, having pitched for four teams in Japan's majors, as well as Major League Baseball's New York Mets, Colorado Rockies and Montreal Expos.
All that experience, however, did not arm him with the knowledge he felt was required to be the coach he wanted to become.
"I played and then I coached, and as one would expect, a lot of things about coaching were difficult," Yoshii told Kyodo News on Wednesday at Yokohama Stadium. "I kept asking myself, 'Is it OK to be doing it like this?'"
"I lacked confidence that the things I told players to do were right. Because what a coach says can impact a player's career, I asked myself if it was OK to be so careless, and I thought, 'Maybe I should do research and study.'"
Starting in 2008, Yoshii coached for Nippon Ham Fighters manager Hideki Kuriyama but quit in 2012. It was the first of two times Yoshii would leave after the two had a falling out, but it did not prevent Kuriyama from wanting the coach on his Japan World Baseball Classic staff in 2023.
From 2013, Yoshii undertook a master's course in physical education at Tsukuba University, specializing in coaching theory, to dive deep into answers that would improve his coaching. Now, he said he's reaping the rewards.
"I've become able to enter into a kind of scientific, objective mode as a result of the coursework I was required to do," Yoshii said.
After a coaching stint with the SoftBank Hawks and a second with the Fighters, Yoshii moved to the Marines in 2019.
With Lotte, he oversaw fire-balling young right-hander Roki Sasaki's careful initiation into pro baseball and helped guide him on the path to becoming Japan's youngest perfect-game pitcher in 2022.
Yoshii said the Marines did not let Sasaki pitch in any games in 2020, his first pro season, because of how slowly he recovered from the arm inflammation that comes with pitching.
In high school, Sasaki's bone density was widely reported to be low, a sign that his bones had not fully developed, something Yoshii had learned was relatively common.
"It's not just Roki," Yoshii said. "Baseball needs to be very careful with players turning pro out of high school because adding too much muscle on those with immature bones can lead to injuries."
"(Research) allows one to know, without depending solely on practical experience, that if you do this, this other thing will result. Through talking about different things with different players, the scope of my understanding grew broader still."
His experience and education made Yoshii an attractive candidate for a managing job he didn't particularly want. But when his predecessor, Tadahito Iguchi, suddenly quit the Marines after the 2022 season, Lotte begged him to take over.
"It (managing) is a lot of trouble," Yoshii said.
But as to whether he has learned anything from sitting in the big chair since last season, Yoshii said, "I'll let you know after we win a championship."
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