By Cho Mu-hyun
Lee Dae-ho, who recently signed with Japan’s Orix Buffaloes, took a short break from training last week to put on a suit and greet fans at an autograph session in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, looking a little slimmer than usual.
Lee has been training extensively in preparation for his overseas move, learning Japanese in the morning, running in the afternoon and lifting weights at night.
“I’ve heard in Japan they start in perfect condition from day one,” he said during an interview with the media there. “I want to be fit so I can play properly.”
But he is to get little rest with a busy schedule ahead.
According to Japan’s daily Sports Nippon on Sunday, Orix manager Akinobu Okada plans to deploy Lee in every inter-squad training match before a friendly against Hanshin Tigers on Feb. 18 to acclimatize the slugger to Japanese baseball.
“He (Lee Dae-ho) has experience facing Japanese pitchers at the Olympic Games or World Baseball Classics but he hasn’t seen many pitchers,” Okada said in an interview with the daily. “Seeing as many pitchers as possible will be a plus (in adapting to Japan).”
The 54-year-old also believes that facing a variety of pitchers with different styles will reveal Lee’s weaknesses against their patterns and plans to take work on this before the friendly.
Lee has been losing weight since November following Okada’s request and started batting training last week.
Lee is to join his former team Lotte Giants at their Saipan training camp on Jan. 10 and will return to Korea and continue stamina training and working on reaching his target weight until the end of the month.
Orix is to start their spring training camp in Miyakozima on Feb. 1, in which the 29-year-old will participate, and an associate of the club said that Lee and Takahiro Okada will train together on batting exercises.
Orix will play a second friendly against the Samsung Lions at the Akama Ballpark in Okinawa on Feb. 21.