Diamond No Ace: The Strongest Hitter Has Arrived

Chapter 457: Four Balls

The players of the Hongmo High School Baseball Team had begun to enjoy the game wholeheartedly.

Completely unleashed, they performed with astonishing energy.

As a result, even the Seido High School Baseball Team had no immediate answer for them.

This stalemate continued until the top of the third inning, when the Seido High School Baseball Team was on offense.

The first to step up to the plate was Seido's Second Batter, Kominato Ryosuke.

In the stands, Coach Todoroki Raizo of the Yakushi High School Baseball Team shared his read on the situation.

"If the Hongmo High School Baseball Team can hold this inning without giving up a run, they might have a chance to turn the tide."

A four-run deficit, though significant, was not entirely insurmountable.

It all depended on whether Hongmo could play their own game and suppress Seido's momentum.

"What if they can't hold it?"

Mishima asked.

He had never truly rated Hongmo High School highly, but he had to admit the team had genuine ability. Even Yakushi would need to work hard to beat them.

Could the Seido High School Baseball Team really end the game early against a team like that?

A cool smile crossed Todoroki Raizo's face.

"The baseball field is unforgiving.

If Hongmo can't hold this inning, the game is effectively over."

At the plate, Kominato Ryosuke looked at his opponent with quiet intensity.

Mogami, on the pitcher's mound, had found his rhythm.

This young man, who had started the game short on experience, was growing more and more comfortable with each passing moment.

He had overcome his initial nerves and discomfort and was now moving in step with Seido's batters.

Even without having refined his craft, Mogami was beginning to show real ability.

In the future, this young man would likely become a fine pitcher.

On your path to growth, allow me to play the role of a stumbling block.

It was nothing more than waiting for the ball to fully enter your reach before swinging.

What was so difficult about that?

Kominato Ryosuke watched calmly, barely glancing at the pitcher's movements.

He waited until the ball was on its way in, then timed his swing.

"Ping!"

The white ball clipped the bat and went foul.

"Foul!"

Kominato Ryosuke's eyes held a quiet smile.

It worked.

The speed of each pitch was different, so logically the smart play was to swing at the first one.

But he was doing the opposite deliberately. He wanted to let the pitcher throw.

He wanted to take the opponent on in their own specialty and beat them there.

"Ping!"

"Foul!!"

Two pitches in, and the Hongmo pitcher-catcher pair had pushed Kominato Ryosuke to two strikes.

But neither of them could manage a smile.

Their faces were pale.

Mogami Takeshi and his partner were not fools.

By now, they knew the opponent had completely decoded their slow-fast combination.

How could he be hitting every ball foul on purpose?

What did that mean?

It meant that if he chose to get a hit, they had no way to stop him. They could only watch.

They couldn't just wait for the end.

Use fastballs.

If the opponent was determined to control every ball foul, they would fight back with pace.

The Hongmo catcher steeled himself.

Mogami, short on experience, could only trust his partner at this point. He threw his fastest pitch without hesitation.

When that pitch was released, even the players in the Seido dugout nodded.

"His pitch speed looks even faster now."

"It's not that it's actually faster. We got used to the slow pitches, so when the fastball suddenly appears, it feels that way."

The Seido players quickly grasped the principle.

But grasping it and adjusting to it were two different things.

Most batters, caught in that kind of sudden shift, would find it very hard not to have their timing thrown off.

Kominato Ryosuke, however, was not most batters.

This man, known as the Demon Batter, showed no reaction whatsoever to the opponent's last-ditch fastball.

He blocked the ball with his bat without any apparent effort.

"Ping!"

The ball bounced high off the bat, sailed over the catcher and umpire, and landed behind them.

The Hongmo catcher's eyes went wide.

How was that possible?

Mogami's maximum pitch speed was 138 kilometers per hour.

Combined with the slower pitches that had come before, the perceived speed from the batter's perspective would have been even greater.

With that kind of variation, how had the batter's timing not been disrupted at all?

In the Hongmo dugout, the coach could no longer sit still.

He stood up, staring in disbelief at Kominato Ryosuke, who stood under 160 centimeters tall.

"Seido has a batter with pitch-reading ability like that?"

Zhang Han and Yuuki Tetsuya had already felt like too much.

Now add this, and then the Fifth Batter Isashiki Jun, and Miyuki, who had hit a three-run Homerun earlier.

Going through Seido's lineup again, the Hongmo coach realized with a quiet sadness that holding the current score was simply impossible.

This batting order was terrifying.

Although Seido had lost to Inashiro in the Autumn Tournament, the team that had gone on to dominate the nation, their standing in the eyes of most fans had not fallen much because of it.

They remained the only team to have scored more than five runs against Narumiya Mei in a single game.

Although Yakushi had beaten Inashiro before, most of their runs in that game had come against Inashiro's relief pitcher.

In the view of most Tokyo fans, had Narumiya Mei started from the beginning, Yakushi would never have had those opportunities.

Three consecutive pitches, all hit foul with precision.

Mogami had failed to disrupt Kominato Ryosuke's timing. Instead, Kominato Ryosuke had completely unsettled his control.

Mogami's control had been one of his strengths, but now he had thrown several consecutive balls that drifted outside the zone.

By the eleventh pitch, he had accumulated four balls.

"Thwack!"

"Ball!"

"Four balls, take your base!"

Kominato Ryosuke, who had worked the count all the way to a walk, still wore that same quietly amused expression.

If anything, he looked slightly unsatisfied.

Only eleven pitches? That was over too soon.

The Hongmo catcher, seeing that expression, felt his blood pressure rise.

But he couldn't afford to dwell on it. A far more dangerous opponent was stepping in.

"Third Batter, Zhang Han!"

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