It has been a month of adjustments for Hirokazu Sawamura.
There was new baseball. The new mound. The new strike zone. And even the new mentality.
"Here in America they really focus on your strength instead of your weaknesses," Sawamura told WEEI.com. "But in Japan, unlike America, they really focus on your weakness and you try and work on your weaknesses and make them your strength. But here they don’t care about your weaknesses. They focus on the strength and make the strength more of a strength and build up your confidence."
In an interview conducted in his native language, Sawamura went into greater detail regarding the differences between the approach he came from and the one he was not adjusting to.
To help illustrate the point, the reliever relayed his experience with Red Sox manager Alex Cora following what was a rocky spring training debut.
New Red Sox pitcher, Hirokazu Sawamura, talks with former Red Sox pitcher, Koji Uehara, about learning American baseball customs and profanity pic.twitter.com/nzaNdpw7JM
— Baseball Cosmopolitan (@baseballcosmo) March 31, 2021
After his first two outings (in which he walked three batters each time out), Sawamura rebounded with a string of solid performances.
Flashing a fastball that sits around 96-97 mph, an above-average slider and a hard split-fingered pitch, Sawamura only gave up one hit and two walks over his last three Grapefruit League appearances.
