(born April 29, 1993) is a Japanese professional

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

pitcher who last played for the

Yomiuri Giants The are a Japanese professional baseball team competing in Nippon Professional Baseball's Central League. Based in Bunkyo, Tokyo, they are one of two professional baseball teams based in Tokyo, the other being the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. They ...

in Japan's

Nippon Professional Baseball or NPB is the highest level of baseball in Japan. Locally, it is often called , meaning ''Professional Baseball''. Outside Japan, it is often just referred to as "Japanese baseball". The roots of the league can be traced back to the formation ...

. In November 2015 he was one of three Giants players handed a penalty of indefinite disqualification by the league for betting on professional baseball games.

Early life

Matsumoto was born in

Takamatsu, Kagawa 270px, Takamatsu City Hall 270px, Aerial view of Takamatsu city center 270px, View from Yashima to Takashima port is a city located in Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 414,134 in 190120 households and a popu ...

on 29 April 1993. A natural right hander, his father Yasuki trained him to throw with his left hand from two years of age. When growing up his ideal person was Gorō Shigeno, the main character from the baseball-themed comic Major; like Matsumoto, Shigeno was a natural right-hander that pitched left-handed. Matsumoto attended school in Takamatsu, including Eimei High School. He was the school baseball team's ace pitcher in his final year, leading the school to victory in the Kagawa Prefecture tournament and earning a berth in the 2011 national high school championships. In the first round match against Okinawa Prefecture's Itoman High School, Matsumoto threw 11 strikeouts in his team's 4–1 victory. In the second round match against Akita Prefecture's Noshiro Shoyo High School, Matsumoto threw nine strikeouts and allowed only one earned run, but his team was unable to score in the 0–2 loss. Matsumoto's powerful performance, along with being the tallest player in the tournament at 193 cm, earned him the nickname "Eimei's

Randy Johnson Randall David Johnson (born September 10, 1963), nicknamed "The Big Unit", is an American photographer and former professional baseball pitcher who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (1988–2009) for six teams, primarily the Seattle M ...

". He was the first round pick by the

in the 2011 Nippon Professional Baseball draft.

Professional career

Matsumoto entered professional baseball as the tallest ever Japanese-born left-handed pitcher. In 2012, his first season as a professional, he made 9 appearances for the Giants' farm team in the Eastern League, finishing with a 2–2 win–loss record and a 4.50

ERA An era is a span of time defined for the purposes of chronology or historiography, as in the regnal eras in the history of a given monarchy, a calendar era used for a given calendar, or the geological eras defined for the history of Earth. Comp ...

. In 2013 Matsumoto was unable to play as he spent the year overcoming injuries to his shoulder. In 2014, he pitched in 16 games for the farm team, earning a 3–10 win–loss record and an ERA of 5.13. In 2015, he made 9 appearances for the farm team, finishing with a 1–1 record and a 4.50 ERA.

Gambling scandal

In October, 2015, Matsumoto was named as a result of an investigation conducted by the Giants into illegal betting on professional and high school baseball games by its players. On 9 November 2015, the Giants organization terminated Matsumoto's contract, along with fellow pitchers

Satoshi Fukuda is a Japanese Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) pitcher who last played for the Yomiuri Giants in Japan's Central League. In October, 2015, Fukuda was named as a result of an investigation conducted by the Giants into illegal betting on profes ...

and Shoki Kasahara. On 10 November the NPB league commissioner penalized the three players with indefinite disqualification. Under league rules, Matsumoto will be able to apply for readmission to the league after 5 years if he satisfies the commissioner that he is remorseful for his actions. The disqualification extends to American

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

and the professional leagues in China,

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eas ...

and

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. The players avoided permanent disqualification because the investigation found no evidence that they were involved in fixing matches. The Giants were also fined ¥10 million over the incident and the team's representative at the NPB, Atsushi Harasawa, resigned to take responsibility.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Matsumoto, Ryuya 1993 births Living people Baseball people from Kagawa Prefecture Japanese baseball players Nippon Professional Baseball pitchers Yomiuri Giants players People from Takamatsu, Kagawa