Believe me, I understand that “resting the protagonist” is hardly the most pulse-quickening theme for a sports anime episode.  I get it.  But as a lifelong baseball fan and decades-long Adachi Mitsuru fan, this development is one of my favorites in all of Mix.  The abuse of young pitchers is a huge problem in baseball generally and Japanese high school baseball particularly.  And to be honest, it’s not something Adachi has ever really let get in the way of a good story before.  He’s skirted the subject here and there (as he did in Cross Game) but never really confronted it.

Whether it’s because this has been more of a topic of concern in recent years or simply due to natural evolution as a writer (even in their 60’s, the great ones keep growing) I think it represents a positive development for Adachi-sensei.  And for Ooyama-kantoku as a character, too.  He notes that this game with Kaio Nishi is where he can really show his stuff, but it’s true as much for the character as the coach.  Certainly there are strategic reasons to be concerned.  With Touma already showing signs of wear, even if he somehow managed to get past Kaio, he’d likely have nothing left for the much stronger Toushu.

Watching all this as a kind of one-man Greek chorus is Nishimura-san, whose Seinan team is breezing through their games with only slightly less dominance than Toushu.  You can tell how badly he thirsts for a rematch with Meisei, but he calmly tells his son there’s a “100% chance” that their finals opponent (he doesn’t even brook the possibility that his team could lose) will be Toushu.  He – like Souichirou and Ooyama – has seen the signs of fatigue in Tou-chan, already beginning to show at the end of the Sankou match.  It’s only when he sees that Touma hasn’t started the Kaio match the says the chance is “not zero” of his rematch – but as well, that the chance of Meisei losing their quarterfinal has gone way up.

You can really see the pressures a high school coach is under here.  Even his own daughter is shaming Ooyama-san for resting Touma, despite the fact that not just Meisei’s future in the tournament (and beyond) is on the line, but Touma’s as well.  He shows his mettle here, though, makes the right decision (and tells Touma’s dad about it in advance) and sticks with it.  And the options at his disposal aren’t good.  He could use Souichirou, who hasn’t been stretched out as a pitcher at all but offers the second-best arm on the squad.  But instead, he decides to roll the dice with his three third-year pitchers, hoping the change of pace and Souichirou’s receiving will be enough to carry the day.

If Meisei has any chance here, it indeed is in not giving the Kaio Nishi lineup a chance to face the same pitcher more than once through the order.  As well, the opponent isn’t fielding a dominant pitcher themselves – he’s a submariner who relies on deception and location more than velocity and movement.  But ultimately Ooyama has it right – if Meisei is going to win it’s probably going to require the Gods being as anxious to see a Tachibana-Mita matchup as he is.  The truth is, though, Meisei would be better off losing than wrecking Touma’s shoulder in his first year of high school.

While this is definitely a baseball episode (fittingly, as Koushien just concluded Thursday, with a team from Osaka winning it all) there was still some action off the field.  Haruka was disappointed at Touma’s blasé reaction to the news that “their” waterfall had been dammed by a landslide, and Otomi was… wistful about the seeming ease between the two of them.  And Ryou went into Tomohito’s room to deliver a box to find two interesting framed items – an autograph from Mita Hiroki, and an overturned photo of the step-brothers together.  The latter is imagery that Adachi loves, and we’ve certainly seen it before – though the symbolism was a little different that time…