NPB Player Movement Database

Shugo Maki does not look like a hitting machine. He looks like a second baseman with a slightly stubborn face, which may be why opposing pitchers keep learning the hard way. Since arriving at the Yokohama DeNA BayStars out of Chuo University, Maki has done one thing with almost boring reliability: hit doubles. He reached 30 of them in each of his first four seasons — a feat no player in NPB history had managed before him — and he did it not with brute force but with a right-handed stroke built to drive the ball into the right-center gap, over and over, as if the outfield wall owed him money.

He has since grown into the club's captain and its emotional center, the player Yokohama fans watch when the game tightens. Scouts who come to see other names tend to leave with notes on Maki: the compact swing, the durability, the at-bats that refuse to be wasted. He is not the loudest star in Japanese baseball. He is the one pitchers would least like to face with a runner on second.