Takuya Asao

Takuya Asao is the pitcher I point to when someone claims relief work is the lesser craft. Born in Chita, Aichi in 1984 and educated locally at Nihon Fukushi University, he spent his entire professional career with the Chunichi Dragons, and in 2011 he did something the sport almost never permits: he won the Central League Most Valuable Player award as a relief pitcher. Not a starter accumulating innings, not even purely a closer. He won it by appearing, over and over, in exactly the moments a game could be lost, and refusing to lose it. That award is really a measurement of how much a team leaned on one arm. Watching him then was a mixture of pleasure and unease — the fastball and the splitter were beautiful, and the workload was frightening, and both things stayed true. He retired without ever wearing another club's uniform. I remember him less for the trophy than for what earning it evidently cost.

Name (English)

Takuya Asao

Name (Japanese)

浅尾拓也

Reading

あさお たくや

Born

October 22, 1984 (age 41)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Libra / Rat

Origin

Chita, Aichi Prefecture, Japan

Height

182 cm

Occupation

baseball player

University

Nihon Fukushi University

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takuya%20Asao
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B5%85%E5%B0%BE%E6%8B%93%E4%B9%9F
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q863219

Tags

• Aichi Prefecture
• baseball player

Last updated

2026-08-07

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.