Yuya Hasegawa

Yuya Hasegawa (長谷川 勇也)

• Bats Left, Throws Right
• Height 5' 10", Weight 180 lb.
• School Senshu University
• High School Sakata Minami High School

• Born December 22, 1984 in Tsuruoka, Yamagata Japan

BR register page

Biographical Information

Yuya Hasegawa has been an outfielder in Nippon Pro Baseball.

Hasegawa won a batting title his junior year of college then was MVP as a senior. He was a fifth-round pick of the Softbank Hawks in 2006 NPB draft. He spent 2007 in ni-gun and missed time with a left leg stress fracture. He made his NPB debut on April 22, 2008, hitting 7th and playing left field. He went 1 for 4 with two strikeouts; his first hit was a single off Hideki Asai. A week later, he got his first homer, a solo shot off Matt Kinney. For the year, he hit .235/.295/.357 in 71 games for Softbank. He broke a pinky in August.

In 2009, the Senshu alumnus had a big season at .312/.387/.426 with 31 doubles. He was 4th in the Pacific League in average behind Teppei Tsuchiya, Tomotaka Sakaguchi and Saburo Omura. He also was fifth in hits (159, behind Hiroyuki Nakajima, Sakaguchi, Kensuke Tanaka and Tsuchiya), tied for 9th in doubles (with Nakajima), 9th in walks (57, between Terrmel Sledge and Naoto Watanabe) and 5th in OBP (behind Nakajima, Atsunori Inaba, Tsuchiya and Tadahito Iguchi). He made the PL All-Star team, and he was 1-for-4, with a single against Katsuhiro Nagakawa in the 2009 NPB All-Star Game 2.

Hasegawa slumped to .255/.346/.315 with 14 steals in 17 tries in 2010. His extra-base hit total fell from 41 to 20. He only made the top 10 in intentional walks (5, tied for the lead with slugger Takeya Nakamura) and hit-by-pitch (12, tied for third with Inaba). Rebounding in 2011, he hit .293/.379/.388 with 13 steals in 14 tries. He was 8th in the PL in average (between Sakaguchi and Ryo Hijirisawa), 8th in walks (47) and 3rd in OBP (behind only Yoshio Itoi and Takumi Kuriyama). Hasegawa was 6-for-11 in the 2011 PLCS final stage, and he hit a game-tying single against Hideaki Wakui in Game 3 then added a walk-off hit against Kazuhisa Makita. Hasegawa hit .273/.318/.360 in the 2011 Nippon Series, and he won his first title as the Hawks beat the Chunichi Dragons in 7 games.

The Yamagata native played 126 games with a .278/.352/.360 batting line and 16 steals in 2012, and he was 8th in steals (tied with Nobuhiro Matsuda). Hasegawa then had his career year in 2013, and he hit .341/.392/.510 with a career-high 19 homers. He broke Munenori Kawasaki's Hawks single-season hits record with 198, and he led the league in hits (18 ahead of Seiichi Uchikawa) and batting (.016 ahead of Toshiaki Imae). He was also 6th in doubles (29, tied with Takumi Kuriyama), 3rd in triples (6, tied with Katsuya Kakunaka), 9th in homers (tied with Uchikawa) and 9th in RBI (83, tied with Tadahito Iguchi). Hasegawa was also voted into the 2013 NPB All-Star Game, and he was 3-for-4 in Game 2. He won his only Best Nine award (joining Uchikawa and Sho Nakata as the top-ranked outfielders in the league), and he gained 106 points in the MVP voting; he was 2nd behind winner Masahiro Tanaka.

Hasegawa hit .300/.375/.414 in 135 games in 2014, and he was 5th in doubles (30, tied with Dae-ho Lee) and 7th in batting (between Dai-Kang Yang and Lee). He also attended the 2014 NPB All-Star Games, and he had a 2-for-6 record. In the 2014 Nippon Series, Hasegawa only played one game and the Hawks beat the Hanshin Tigers in 5 games. He suffered from a right ankle injury in 2015, and he only played 30 games with a .224/.313/.400 batting line. He returned in 2016 with a .271/.361/.403 batting line, and he was voted into the 2016 NPB All-Star Game. He crushed a solo shot against Yusuke Nomura in Game 1, and he was 0-for-1 in Game 2.

However, the 2016 season was the last time that he played more than 100 games a year. Hasegawa only played 23 games with a .216/.341/.514 batting line in 2017, and he was 2-for-7 in the 2017 Nippon Series with a homer against Shoichi Ino in Game 1 to help the Hawks beat the Yokohama BayStars in 6 games. He then went 13-for-43 in 2018, and he was hitless in 4 at-bats in the 2018 Nippon Series; the Hawks beat the Carp in 6 games. Hasegawa had a .302/.407/.605 batting line in 2019, and he hit a game-winning sacrifice fly in the 2019 Nippon Series Game 3; the Hawks swept the Yomiuri Giants. Hasegawa slumped to .224/.322/.329 in 2020, and he hit .260/.367/.430 in 71 games in 2021. He announced his retirement after the 2021 season, and he became the new batting coach for the Hawks in 2022.

Overall, Hasegawa hit .288/.365/.410 with 1,108 hits and 76 homers in 14 seasons in NPB.

Sources

• Wiki Japan
• Japan Baseball Daily
• Taiwan Baseball Wiki