Kazuhiro Wada

Kazuhiro Wada
Chūnichi Dragons - No. 5
Outfielder
Born: June 19, 1972 Gifu , Japan
Strikes: Right	Throws: Right
Debut in the Nippon Pro Yakyū
April 30,  1997  with the Seibu Lions
NPB statistics (until 2010)
Batting average	, 316
Hits	1,516
Home runs	259
RBI	797
Teams
Seibu Lions (1997-2007) Chūnichi Dragons (since 2008)

Kazuhiro Wada ( Japanese 和田 一 浩 , Wada Kazuhiro ; born June 19, 1972 in Gifu , Gifu Prefecture ) is a Japanese baseball player . The right-handed outfielder has been playing for the Chūnichi Dragons in the Japanese Central League since 2008 , having previously worked for the Seibu Lions in the Pacific League for eleven years . He was inducted into the Best Nine five times and took part in the All-Star Game five times by 2010 .

Wada attended the "Gifu Commercial High School of Gifu Prefecture" ( Gifu-kenritsu Gifu shōgyō kōtō gakkō ), for which he took part in the spring and summer kōshien in 1989 . He then attended the Tōhoku Fukushi University in Sendai and played in the league of the "Baseball Association of the Six Universities of Sendai" ( Sendai roku-daigaku yakyu renmei ). After graduating, he was employed by Kobe Seikosho (English Kobe Steel ) and played as a shakaijin in the works team.

In the 1996 draft , Wada was drafted in the fourth round by the Seibu Lions. He received his first assignments at the beginning of the 1997 season - initially as a catcher . In 1997 and 1998, when he was increasingly used as an outfielder, he also had his first appearances in the Nippon Series , which the Lions lost in both years. Wada was more regular from the 2000 season in the lineup when he scored a batting average of .306 in 55 missions. Until 2001 he was still occasionally as a catcher defensive, especially in 2000 as a first baseman.

Starting in 2002, Wada was part of the Lions' regular line-up with over 100 missions a year and since then has regularly beaten with an average of over .300, in the same year he was included in the Best Nine of the Pacific League for the first time. He remained unlucky in the 2002 Nippon Series when he failed to score a hit in 15 at-bats; Seibu lost to the Giants in four games. In the even stronger 2003 season, Wada was part of the All-Star Team of the Pacific League for the first time and ended the season with the third-highest batting average in the league behind Michihiro Ogasawara and Yoshitomo Tani . In 2004 he contributed to the 2004 Nippon Series , when Seibu defeated Chūnichi in four to three games, with eight extra base hits , including four home runs for the championship title.

In 2004, Wada was also on the Japanese national team at the Athens Olympics when Japan won the bronze medal. In 2006 he was a member of the victorious Japanese team at the first World Baseball Classic , in which Wada only recorded two hitless at-bats. In 2005 he was the only time Batting Champion of the Pacific League.

After the 2007 season, Wada became a free agent and then signed a three-year contract with the Chūnichi Dragons for an estimated 840 million yen . In 2009 and 2010 he was in all 144 regular season games and was one of the Dragons' best batterers with Hirokazu Ibata in 2009 and Masahiko Morino in 2010. In September 2010, Wada scored the 1,500th hit of his career. For the 2010 season performance, Wada was named MVP of the Central League.

Web links

• Chūnichi Dragons : player profile, statistics (Japanese)
• Kazuhiro Wada in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Nippon Yakyū Kikō / Nippon Professional Baseball: Player Statistics

Individual evidence

1. ^ Outfielder Wada joins Dragons. In: The Japan Times . December 27, 2007, accessed September 14, 2010 . 
2. ↑ Swallows hold off late-charging 'Stars / Dragons edge Giants. In: The Japan Times . September 4, 2010, accessed September 14, 2010 . 
3. ^ Dragons 'Wada, Hawks' Wada named MVPs. In: The Japan Times . November 19, 2010, accessed November 24, 2010 .