Kazuya Miyuki

Kazuya Miyuki is one of the main characters from the Diamond no Ace anime and manga.

Kazuya is a student of Seidou High and is the regular catcher as well as the captain of Seidou High's baseball team. He is a genius catcher whose name is nationally well known. He was scouted by Takashima when he was still a first year in junior high.

Appearance
Miyuki has medium length brown hair that he styles messy and windswept. He has brown/amber eyes, and wears glasses. During games he wears contacts and visors to protect them from debris. He often wears his hat sideways. Miyuki is considered to be rather good-looking, often having a plethora of girls shouting his name whenever he's at bat.

Personality
Miyuki is deemed to be arrogant and cheeky, and enjoys getting into people's heads. Despite his good looks, he has a horrible personality. Whether by outsmarting them on the diamond, or just by getting under their skin, he is often seen laughing because of this. In contrast to his gadfly-ish attitude, he can be serious and forthright, not mincing words when pointing out what his teammates should have done and can do better. He's not afraid of being disliked, and there were times when his strict words have affected his teammates. But he has stronger determination to win than anyone else hidden inside of him.

Despite all this, Miyuki is still well-liked by his teammates due to his reliability and cool head, making him a valued player on Seidou's roster. He comes off as callous at times, opting to progress forward, often ignoring personal sentiments and feelings, but in reality he wants what's best for the team, and for his team to be the best. Miyuki is among the players who takes baseball seriously and takes initiative in every situation that will benefit the team. His unorthodox methods have given him an edge over other players, and his talent is frequently recognized.

He does not often open up to people or talk about his past. In all actuality he is pretty closed off with himself. He is one of the few players whose room is often flocked to by other members. He is Yuuki's shogi playmate and Isashiki's former massager. Kuramochi and other batchmates also frequently hang out in his room along with Sawamura and Furuya. He looks up to Chris, his senior who had defeated him in junior high. After the third years retire, Miyuki is promoted to team captain, as recommended by Yuuki. At first he worries about not being able to measure up, but is slowly growing more confident in his role as the story progresses.

Abilities
Coach Kataoka acknowledges his skills as a "pivotal part of the team". Coaches from opponent teams also acknowledge his natural baseball feel, which is mostly uncommon to other baseball players. He has good judgement on when, and when not to take action during defense. He is skilled in drawing out the potential of his teammates and is really dependable to the pitchers. His catching skills are high, rarely letting the ball go pass him and leads in a way to make the best use of pitchers.

Framing
As seen in the manga and anime, Miyuki is observant of the overall field workout. He frames pitches with subtlety, receiving balls close to the chest, low and away or anything sharp but never stabbing at it, and turning pitches that nick the border of the zone - all depending on the batter's batting capability and behavior and on his pitchers. This ability enables him to take control of the defense and more importantly, making close pitches seem more inside the strike zone.

Caught Stealing
He is highly proficient on retiring base runners. The strength of his arm is said to be top-class in the country and he also throws accurately right on top of the base allowing the baseman to retire runner easily. In addition, he is also capable of reacting proficiently to irregularly bounced balls and prevent home-squeeze play. His defensive skills are so solid that it makes opponent’s runners very wary of him and sometimes lose their will to steal. His great footwork aids his positioning, so it also allows him to always be ready to start throwing to the target base. He also subtlely changes his hand placements when readying himself to catch low breaking balls, which also helps with getting to his ready stance quicker (pop time of <2s), but any astute coaches can catch his changes to make tactical adjustments.

Fielding
His pitchers know how much more effectively and frequently they can execute all those nasty pitches in the dirt because of the confidence they have in the man receiving them. The way he prepares the Seidou starters and relievers, calls a game, manages with mound visits and even frames pitches is all a standard often recognized by the people in the baseball field. His reliability as the backstop proves his value on defense and presence that essentially amounts to having a coach on the field.

Offense
Formerly Seidou's 6th batter, he was most reliable when there are base runners. Miyuki could hit homers or long balls depending on the runners' positions. However, without runners on base, he was often struck out. Although his batting was unstable, he was acknowledged to be a capable clutch hitter at critical moments.

After becoming the 4th batter, though not as threatening as their former captain, pitchers are wary every time he is at-bat knowing he is skillful enough to hit their best pitches; in addition to the fact that Miyuki would often purposefully aims to hit the pitchers' best pitches in order to deal as much damage as possible to their confidence. The reason he is talented at hitting precise pitches coming from his experience and calculations. He has somehow overcome his weakness in the absence of runners and has been able to hit consistently, especially in critical stages of a match since the Fall Tournament.

In his 3rd year, Miyuki started using a wooden bat for batting practice. He is capable of hitting Toujou's difficult pitches to the fence with ease while using a wooden bat. Toujou said that despite missing some easy pitches here and there, Miyuki bats very well against Toujou who was pitching at 90% of his ability.[49] As a result, his hitting and slugging average has continued to improve.

Trivia

 * A real-life catcher with comparable defensive skills is Takuya Kai, but Kai is not as proficient on offense.
 * Miyuki took first place in the first official character popularity poll for both the online preliminary and final result.
 * Kataoka has always thought of Miyuki as the next captain, who was also recommended by Yuuki.
 * He loves pitchers with good control because they are easy to lead and predict.
 * His shoulder is strong enough that his teammates thought he would make a fine pitcher; however, Miyuki declined the idea stating that it's more fun to play as a catcher and leads the pitchers instead.
 * The last match-up between him and Chris happened during the 3rd years vs. current members wherein both coached their teams.
 * Interestingly, he has never been drawn without some form of glasses. Even asleep, he was shown wearing an eye mask.
 * Miyuki and Kuramochi Youichi were the only two players from their year to make the first string in their first summer at Seido. However, Miyuki was the only one who became a starter right away.
 * Miyuki's dorm room number is 203.
 * His roommates are Kimura (2nd year) and Okumura Koushuu, a 1st year catcher.
 * He was the catcher for an Edogawa Senior League team since his first year in junior high. His specific team was the Edogawa Dragons.
 * He has no particular food preference but he doesn't really like sweets.
 * He has no particular strength in academic performance but is very good at calculating in his head.
 * Miyuki's hobby/special skill is cooking.
 * He has great respect for Chris-senpai.
 * There are only two known characters to call Miyuki with his given name "Kazuya": Narumiya Mei and Kawakami Norifumi (in the drama CD only).
 * In an online poll by Kodansha, called "Most Popular Megane Danshi", Miyuki placed 1st.
 * He claims to be an "Edoko" aka a "Tokyoite."
 * His family owns and operates a factory called Miyuki Steel.
 * The "steel" in the name is a play on the word steal. Both "steal" and "steel" are written and read the same way in katakana and they wanted to include something baseball-related.
 * He is one of the chosen players for the Tokyo Invitational game against the United States team, which is held in June and over the course of 3 days.
 * As of the Spring Tournament's Eigen High vs. Seidou match, Miyuki has hit a total of 32 homeruns in official games.
 * The average time it takes to throw from home plate to second Miyuki recorded in Senbatsu was 1.91 seconds.
 * Miyuki likes a band called The Back Horn, confirmed by Terajima on Twitter.