Japan’s home run king might be on the verge of changing his name to “Stanford’s home run king.”
Rintaro Sasaki, the left-handed power hitter who set the Japanese high school home run record (14) while playing at Hanamaki Higashi High School (Hanamaki, Iwate, Japan), has made a big first impression in the States.
Watch how far his first collegiate home run goes—if you can keep track of it.
Listed at No. 15 on the D1 Baseball Preseason Top 50 First Basemen, Sasaki’s power at the high school level translates at the top tier of NCAA baseball without growing pains. Lefty vs. Lefty seems to be a non-issue as well.
Perhaps even Shohei Ohtani, who also attended Hanamaki Higashi High School, would agree with that assessment.
Sasaki differs from the left-handed phenomenon for the Los Angeles Dodgers, though—and, really, when compared to many of Japan’s stars.
While many thought he’d follow the typical trend and enter the Nippon Professional Baseball Draft after high school, he instead chose to come to the U.S. to play college ball.
“When I was evaluating the doors that were open for me—and fortunately, I had a lot of doors—I considered which ones would be able to maximize my potential,” Sasaki said via his interpreter, Chihiro Tsukamoto, during an interview with MLB.com. “That, combined with, I really have this intense passion and desire to play college baseball in the USA.”
So far, so good.
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