Akito Takabe

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Akito Takabe (髙部 瑛斗)

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Biographical Information[edit]

Akito Takabe has played in Nippon Pro Baseball.

The Chiba Lotte Marines drafted Takabe in the third round of the 2019 NPB draft. [1] He had a right hand bone fracture in a friendly match against the Rakuten Monkeys, and missed a month in 2020. Takabe recovered soon, debuted against the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks on October 6, and got his first hit off Rei Takahashi three days later. [2] Takabe spent nearly the entirety of 2021 in the NPB Farm Leagues, and led the EL with 28 stolen bases. He was promoted to NPB on the end of the season, and blasted his first career home run (off Rei Takahashi again).

Takabe replaced injured Takashi Ogino to start on Opening Day as the left fielder. He made his first PL All-Star team and started 2022 NPB All-Star Game 1 at center field, hitting ninth. He reached by the error of Kaito Kozono, but grounded into a double play on his second appearance and was retired by Atsuki Yuasa and Masato Morishita respectively. [3] In game 2, he hit 7th and started at center field again. He reached on a fielder's choice and then stole the second base. He then flew out against Yudai Ono, singled off Ryoji Kuribayashi and ground out against Scott McGough. [4] Takabe ended up at .274/.324/.342 with a league-leading 44 stolen bases, double runner-up Ukyo Shuto. He was second in runs (six behind Hideto Asamura), second in hits (148, 13 behind Hiroaki Shimauchi), seventh in average (between Yuki Yanagita and Ryosuke Tatsumi) [5], tied Kazunari Ishii and Shuhei Fukuda for third in triples (6) and second with 22 sacrifice hits (16 behind Takuya Kai). He also won his first Gold Glove as an outfielder. He was fourth in Best Nine votes at outfielder, only 65 points shy of Shimauchi to win that award. [6] He also got a couple votes for the 2022 PL MVP. [7]

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