PEORIA, Ariz.–Padres reliever Yuki Matsui\u2019s will not pitch for Japan in the World Baseball Classic and the left-hander’s status for San Diego\u2019s season opener in a month also is unclear because of a left groin strain.<\/p>\n
Matsui was still throwing off flat ground Thursday, a week after\u00a0cutting short a batting practice session\u00a0because of the groin.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, I\u2019m just continuing the throwing progression, getting intensities and distances of (playing) catch back up,\u201d Matsui told reporters through a translator. \u201cOnce it\u2019s good enough, then I\u2019ll start throwing off the mound. But as to when, we don\u2019t know yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old Matsui, who is 7-3 with a 3.86 ERA in 125 appearances in two seasons since\u00a0signing a $28 million, five-year with Padres, also said he wasn’t sure yet about opening day. San Diego\u2019s opener is March 26 at home against Detroit.<\/p>\n
Defending WBC champion Japan opens against Taiwan on March 6 at the Tokyo Dome. Matsui was replaced on Japan\u2019s roster by left-hander Yumeto Kanemaru of the Chunichi Dragons.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was looking forward to playing with them,\u201d Matsui said. \u201cI think the Tokyo games, because of the time differences, I don\u2019t think I can watch in real time. But I believe they\u2019re going to make it to the round in Miami. And I think that\u2019s when I\u2019ll be able to watch live, and cheer for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before the 5-foot-8 Matsui\u00a0joined the Padres, he had a 2.40 career ERA, 236 saves and a 1.11 WHIP over 10 seasons in Nippon Professional Baseball. He was the youngest pitcher in the Japanese major leagues to reach 200 saves. He made his Japanese big league debut at age 18 in 2014 and became a five-time All-Star for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, leading the Pacific League in saves in 2019, 2022 and 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PEORIA, Ariz.–Padres reliever Yuki Matsui\u2019s will not pitch for Japan in the World Baseball Classic and the left-hander’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[78971,64,63,941,591,44,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-507073","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-asahi-shimbun","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-japan","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}