Hiroki Minei

Hiroki Minei, born June 4, 1991 in Nanjo, Okinawa, is a catcher — which in Japanese baseball is closer to a management role than a fielding position. He came up through Asia University, spent years with the Yokohama DeNA BayStars, and now plays for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. Catchers occupy a strange place in the sport's accounting. When a pitcher throws well, the pitcher gets the headline; when the staff struggles, the catcher's game-calling gets questioned. Very little of what a good one contributes shows up in a box score. At 176 cm he isn't physically imposing by modern professional standards, and he has never been the kind of player who sells tickets on his own. Yet two organizations have wanted him behind the plate, and in Japan, where pitching staffs are managed with almost obsessive care, that is a meaningful endorsement from people who watch every pitch. He caught Nao Higashihama at Okinawa Shogaku High School, winning the spring Koshien together, and again at Asia University.

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Name (English)

Hiroki Minei

Name (Japanese)

嶺井博希

Reading

みねい ひろき

Born

June 4, 1991 (age 35)

Origin

Nanjō-shi, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan

Height

175 cm

Occupation

baseball player

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Gemini / Goat

University

Asia University

• Xhttps://x.com/h_minei39
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroki%20Minei
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B6%BA%E4%BA%95%E5%8D%9A%E5%B8%8C
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17214368

Tags

• Okinawa Prefecture
• baseball player

Last updated

September 29, 2026

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.