Seiya Matsubara

Seiya Matsubara (松原 聖弥)

• Bats Left, Throws Right
• Height 5' 8", Weight 158 lbs.

• School Meisei University
• High School Sendai Ikuei High School

• Born January 26, 1995 in Osaka, Osaka Japan

BR register page

Biographical Information

Seiya Matsubara has played in Nippon Pro Baseball.

Matsubara was drafted by the Yomiuri Giants in the 5th round of the development phase in the 2016 NPB draft, and he went 0-for-8 in his first season in the NPB Farm Leagues. He improved to .316/.373/.392 in 2018, and he broke Kenshi Sugiya's Eastern League record with 134 hits in a season. He also led the league with 6 triples (tied with Kazuma Mike), and he was 4th in doubles (between Munetaka Murakami and Keisuke Moriyama), 2nd in batting (.020 behind Shingo Ishikawa) and 2nd in steals (24, 2 behind Shohei Suzuki, though he was caught 20 times). Matsubara extended his solid performance in the minors in 2019, and he had a .287/.349/.401 batting line with 5 homers. He was 7th in hits (between Taiki Sekine and Manaya Nishikawa) and 5th in steals (17, between Tsuyoshi Yamasaki and Kyota Fujiwara; this time, he was caught 20 times for a sub-.500 success rate).

The Osaka native debuted in the Central League in 2020, and he hit .263/.330/.371 with 3 homers in his first season. He improved to .274/.333/.422 with 12 homers in 2021, and he tied Wataru Takamatsu for 5th in steals in the Central League. Matsubara became the first CL player who joined the league as a development player to hit double-digit homers in a season, and he was the first CL development player to hit a leadoff homer, when he did it on April 20 against Koji Fukutani. Matsubara slumped to .113/.160/.155 in 2022, and he only got 25 more at-bats for the top team before the Giants traded him to the Seibu Lions for Gakuto Wakabayashi. Matsubara went 8-for-65 with his new team in the rest of the '24 season.

Sources

• Wiki Japan