Pitching Style
Wada is a 5 ft 11 in, 170 lb, left-handed pitcher with an unorthodox delivery, throwing from a high three-quarters arm slot (nearly over the top) but deceiving hitters by keeping his throwing arm back and delaying its swing as he drives to the plate with his lower body.
Wada's four-seam fastball has good late life but decidedly below-average velocity, topping out at 146 km/h (91 mph) and usually sitting at 135 to 141 km/h (84 to 88 mph). He compensates for this with his deceptive arm swing and late release point, complementing it with a solid-average slider and a changeup.
While Wada has good command of his pitches overall, recording a career walks per nine innings rate of 2.46 (until 2011 season), he has established somewhat of a reputation as a pitcher who is prone to throwing mistake pitches and giving up a large number of home runs. However, he has shown marked improvement in this area since making his professional debut, giving up progressively fewer homers in every season of his career except for 2005.
Read more about this topic: Tsuyoshi Wada
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