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Baseball: Rikuu Nishida aims high in deep White Sox minors talent pool
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| 23 jam yang lalu
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TOKYO (Kyodo) -- While his first pro baseball season in the United States was a success, 23-year-old utility man Rikuu Nishida knows the competition to earn a spot on the Chicago White Sox major league roster will not be easy.
Nishida, selected in the 11th round of Major League Baseball's July 2023 draft out of the University of Oregon, batted .304 with a solid .418 on-base percentage at three minor league stops in 2024, finishing at Double-A Birmingham.
"I had a good season. It was incredibly fun," said Nishida, an Osaka Prefecture native who attended Sendai's Tohoku high school before entering a junior college in the United States and moving on to Oregon.
In 127 games last year, the left-handed-hitting second baseman and outfielder drew 86 walks and stole 49 bases while being caught stealing just 12 times.
Nishida tried to improve in every area of the game.
"We play six games a week. It was brutal," said the 168-centimeter Nishida. "I'm on the small side and I wanted to show I was strong enough to keep playing."
While his performance in the low minors was noticeable for a team that lost an MLB record 121 games this past season, Nishida has no illusions about a smooth path to the big leagues.
According to MiLB.com, he is not yet ranked among the top 30 prospects in the White Sox's talent-rich minor league system.
"A few years from now this is going to be a strong team," Nishida said. "But if I can't beat out the competition for a job, I won't be able to compete against other teams on the field, so that's my first task."
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