TOKYO (Kyodo) — Former Yomiuri Giants slugger Hideki Matsui, who also starred for the New York Yankees, will become the Central League club’s new manager, sources familiar with the matter said Friday, filling the vacancy left by Shinnosuke Abe’s departure in May.<\/p>\n
The 52-year-old Matsui was one of Japan’s most prolific sluggers, hitting a combined 507 home runs in Japan and the United States.<\/p>\n
After Abe stepped down as manager following his arrest on suspicion of assaulting his teenage daughter, coach Hideki Hashigami took over for the remainder of the season. Prosecutors later decided not to indict Abe, 47, over the alleged assault.<\/p>\n
Yomiuri finished second in the CL regular season behind the Hanshin Tigers this year but was eliminated by the third-place DeNA BayStars in the first stage of the postseason Climax Series.<\/p>\n
After starring in the prestigious national high school baseball tournament at Koshien Stadium as a student at Seiryo Senior High School in Ishikawa Prefecture, Matsui joined the Giants as a first-round pick in the 1992 draft.<\/p>\n
The former outfielder won three home run titles, three RBI titles and one batting title.<\/p>\n
Matsui moved to MLB in 2003 and spent much of his major league career with the Yankees, earning World Series MVP honors in 2009 before retiring in 2012.<\/p>\n
In Japan, Matsui batted .304 with 332 home runs and 889 RBIs. In the major leagues, he hit .282 with 175 home runs and 760 RBIs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO (Kyodo) — Former Yomiuri Giants slugger Hideki Matsui, who also starred for the New York Yankees, will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":937823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,8810,504196,5126,504197,35485,504198,591,38797,85,11804],"class_list":["post-937822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-become","tag-ex-yankees","tag-giants","tag-hideki","tag-manager","tag-matsui","tag-mlb","tag-slugger","tag-sports","tag-tokyo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937822","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=937822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/937823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}