Miwa Naraoka

Miwa Naraoka (楢岡 美和)

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 5' 5", Weight 134 lb.

• High School Saitama Sakae High School

• Born August 15, 1994 in Edogawa, Tokyo Japan

Biographical Information

Miwa Naraoka hit .293/.391/.379 for Saitama Astraia in the 2013 Japanese Women's Baseball League, then improved to .313/.370/.414 in 2014 (finishing 9th in average) before dropping to .250/.345/.333 in 2015. She had a big year in 2016 at .366/.451/.537. She led the league with 45 hits, including a rare over-the-fence homer. She won both the Best Nine and Gold Glove awards in the outfield. In '17, she hit .327/.371/.421 with 33 RBI in 47 games. She was second in RBI and again won a Gold Glove and Best Nine.

In 2018, Naraoka batted .302/.379/.413 and she won another Best Nine. She finished her JWBL career at .311/.385/.420 with 102 runs, 52 doubles, 10 triples and 120 RBI in 235 games. She helped Yuki Kawabata found a new team, the Honeys, in 2022. She played for Japan in the 2023 Women's Baseball Asian Cup. She played mostly right field, with a little center as well. Batting second in the opener, she laid down a sacrifice her first time up then singled off Min-jeong Kwak of South Korea to score Kae Iwami; Kawabata later drove her in. She was 3-for-3 with a walk, four runs and six RBI the next game, versus Indonesia. In the title game, she was 1 for 4 against Taiwan, doubling off Chi-Jung Chen to drive in a run as Japan won. She finished the tourney at .613/.625/.923 with 7 runs, 4 doubles and 12 RBI in 5 games, with two putouts in the field. She was among the tourney leaders in runs (tied for 6th), hits (tied for 4th with teammates Kawabata, Tamaki Muramatsu and Haruna Tadano), doubles (tied Tadano for the lead), RBI (1st, two ahead of Ju-a Park and Hsiao-Mei Chen), total bases (tied Hyeo-nah Kim and Tadano for the lead), slugging (2nd, .168 behind Tadano), average (tied Muramatsu for 7th) and OPS (6th). She did not make the tourney All-Star team as Seo-jin Yang, Hsiao-Mei Chen and Yaya Kojima were selected in the outfield.

Sources

• Japanese Wikipedia
• 2023 Women's Baseball Asian Cup