The 2022 Summer Koshien Tournament begins on on August 6.
With tradition we will mention each school in this year's tournament with a 2022 Seibu Lions connection. . This is officially the 104th tournament in Summer Koshien history.
Here are the Lions high schools:
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Aikōdai Meiden (Aichi, 2nd consecutive appearance, 14th overall): P Ken Togame
"Meiden" is famously known as the high school of Ichiro Suzuki. Togame has been a starter for most of his Lions career, but switched to relief after struggling in 2020. He has seen low leverage duty for the Lions bullpen in 2022
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Tsuruga Kehi (Fukui, 4th consecutive appearance, 11th overall): IF Shinya Hasegawa, P Tetsuya Utsumi
Hasegawa was an ikusei draft pick of the Lions in 2020 straight out of high school. Tsuruga Kehi is mostly known for Masataka Yoshida among active NPB players. Hasegawa has since been promoted from ikusei and seen time as a pinch runner.
Utsumi has been a long time veteran mostly with the Yomiuri Giants. He was taken by the Lions as compensation for the free agent loss of Ginjiro Sumitani after 2018. Since then, he's been a spot starter mostly serving as a coach in Ni-gun.
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Osaka Toin (Osaka, 2nd consecutive appearance, 12th overall): IF Takeya Nakamura, C Masatoshi Okada, C Tomoya Mori, OF Yuta Nakamigawa
The Lions pipeline with Osaka Toin continued when they took Nakamigawa in the 7th round of the 2020 draft. Mori has the most successful high school career, winning both Spring and Summer Koshien in 2012 with Shintaro Fujinami as his pitcher. Okada was the catcher for Sho Nakata in high school and serves as the Lions backup today. Nakamura needs no intro as he's the franchise leader in home runs.
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Meitoku Gijiiku (Kochi, 3rd consecutive appearance, 22nd overall): OF Junichiro Kishi
Kishi was a pitcher in high school and actually lost to Mori's Osaka Toin team in a Koshien tournament. An 8th round pick in 2019 out of Indy ball, He earned a significant amount of ichi-gun games in 2021 and even had a starting OF position in 2022
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Nakaguma was recently promoted from ikusei this season and made his ichi-gun debut in one game. Kawano was a high school draft pick in 2019, only appearing in a handful of games.
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Osaka Toin is a heavy favorite this year due to their dominance in both the Spring Koshien tournament and the Osaka prefectural qualifying tournament. They allowed only one run during the qualification phase.
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