Flame-throwing Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters right-hander Shohei Otani worked three scoreless innings on Saturday in his final preseason exhibition before he goes to the mound next week on Opening Day.
Otani, who professes to have made some minor adjustments to his approach, said he is satisfied with a performance he graded at 80 percent that comes six days before he starts Opening Day on the mound for the first time in his career. The outing was a marked improvement over his two other preseason exhibition starts, in which he allowed nine runs combined and issued 10 walks over eight innings.
"Today was neither bad nor good. But considering I'm doing things differently, I'm satisfied with where I am right now," he said at Tokyo Dome, where the Fighters defeated the Yomiuri Giants 5-1. "I could have kept going the way I was last year, but I felt I needed to change to grow. You don't expect to take that big step up all of a sudden. I could easily go back to how I was doing it last year, but where would that get me?