is a
Japanese professional
baseball infielder
An infielder is a baseball player stationed at one of four defensive "infield" positions on the baseball field.
Standard arrangement of positions
In a game of baseball, two teams of nine players take turns playing offensive and defensive roles. ...
for the
Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles of
Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). He has previously played in NPB for the
Chunichi Dragons
Early career
Abe started playing rubber-ball baseball in elementary school and continued at junior high school.
He experienced victory in the Iwate Prefectural and Tohoku regional tournaments with his high school Ichinoseki Daiichi Senior High School but did not make an appearance at
Koshien.
In his freshman year at
Meiji University
, abbreviated as Meiji (明治) or Meidai (明大'')'', is a private research university located in Chiyoda City, the heart of Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1881 as Meiji Law School (明治法律学校, ''Meiji Hōritsu Gakkō'') by three Meiji-er ...
, Abe started on the bench while in his junior year he became a regular at third base. In Fall of his senior year he contributed to the school's first league victory in 15 years.
He was employed by
Honda and did wiring work while playing baseball for the company team. In his second year with the company he made an appearance in the
industrial league Japan championships.
On 22 October 2015, Abe was selected as the 5th draft pick for the
Chunichi Dragons at the
2015 NPB Draft and on 26 November signed a provisional contract with a \50,000,000 sign-on bonus and a \10,000,000 yearly salary.
Professional career
2016-2018
On 11 August, Abe made his first team debut as a pinch-runner against the
Tokyo Yakult Swallows in a 2-8 loss. He then hit his first
home run and
RBI on 14 September against the
Yomiuri Giants at
Nagoya Dome
The Nagoya Dome (ナゴヤドーム), known as Vantelin Dome Nagoya (バンテリンドーム ナゴヤ) for sponsoring reasons, is a baseball field, constructed in 1997, located in the city of Nagoya, Japan. The dome has the capacity to seat up ...
. From his debut, Abe stayed with the first team until the end of the season making 24 appearances with a .170 batting average filing in at short-stop, third and second base.
In 2017, Abe was able to play in 21 games with the top team while hitting a slash line of .244/.309/.333 on the farm over 85 games.
In 2018, Abe once again had a limited role playing mostly as a pinch-hitter and defensive replacement in 18 games with the top team while in the fall he started training to play in the outfield. His results on the farm were less impactful than the previous season hitting a clip of .212/.296/.318 with 5 homeruns over 82 games.
2019
From spring training, Abe was marked for a starting role alongside fellow utility
Naomichi Donoue and appeared in the opening day line-up at of the 2019 season at second base. On the April 5, Abe hit his first homerun since his rookie season against the
Tokyo Yakult Swallows. Abe was a
UZR Ultimate zone rating (UZR) is a Sabermetrics, sabermetric statistic used to measure fielding. It compares the event that actually happened (hit/out/error) to data on similarly hit balls in the past to determine how much better or worse the fielder d ...
leader at second base for the Dragons leading the, batting .291 and a .742 OPS.
2023
On November 19, 2022, Abe was traded to the
Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles in exchange for
Hideaki Wakui.
Career statistics
''Bold indicates league leader; statistics current as of 29 September 2016''
References
External links
Dragons.jp
{{DEFAULTSORT:Abe, Toshiki
1989 births
Living people
Baseball people from Iwate Prefecture
Japanese baseball players
Nippon Professional Baseball infielders
Chunichi Dragons players
Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles players
People from Ichinoseki, Iwate