With two fastballs and two strikes, Lin Guanglai, relying on his personal ability, had already firmly grasped control of the situation in this at-bat. Taking the returned baseball from the catcher, the Softbank team's pitcher and catcher duo started to maneuver against their opponent in the most stable way possible.
The third and fourth pitches were both vertical breaking balls, one purely deceptive bad ball was avoided by Dai-Kang Yang, while the other, half-real and half-false, almost tricked him into swinging– if it weren't for his powerful body core stopping his swing trajectory at the last moment, Dai-Kang Yang would likely be on his way back to the bench by now.
With the count at two balls and two strikes, Lin Guanglai didn't want to keep tangling with his opponent any longer; shaking his head a few times at Takeshima Shinya, he opted for a choice that most tested a pitcher's personal ability:
