Cuban slugger Despaine to DL in Japanese Baseball

GRANMA, Cuba, Sep 16 (acn) Cuban baseball player Alfredo Despaigne suffers a sprain on his left wrist, so he has not participated in the last four matches of his team, the Chiba Lotte Marines, in Japanese Professional Baseball League (NPB).

According to Baseball Japanese digital site, Despaigne, cleanup hitter of his team, received the blow in the game last Friday against the Saitama Seibu Lions and he will miss for that reason a total of eight games in a recovery period of 10 days.
The Marines are almost assured of qualifying for the playoffs, as they appear third in the Pacific League, with 66 wins, nine more than the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, their closest pursuer, with only 14 games to be played.
NPB debutant in 2014, the Cuban player can participate in the final phase of the tournament and help his squad in its pretensions to move forward as possible.
Despaigne, 30, has batting average of .286, the highest of a Latin American player in the NPB, and he is the main figure of the Marines.
According to Zona de Strike, site specializing in baseball, this has been his best season in Japan, as he appears third in runs scored (80) and RBIs (91), stat that becomes him the first foreign player of the Chiba Lotte Marines with over 90 RBIs in a regular season.
The Caribbean slugger also ranks fourth in home runs with 24, including nine in August, the month of better results for him in that stat.
The largest amount of home runs by the Cuban at NPB before starting this season was of 18, achieved in the previous campaign and matched last August 12 versus the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks.
Debutant in Cuba´s National Baseball Series (SNB by its Spanish acronym) with Granma in 2004, Alfredo Despaigne hit .311 in his first season in Japan with 12 homers and 33 RBIs in 45 games.
In 2015, he participated in 103 games, with 18 home runs and poor BA of .258.
Before signing with the Chiba Lotte Marines, he participated in 11 SNB seasons with 232 homers.
His total of 36, achieved in 2012, is the record for a regular season in Cuba.