As manager Takahiro Arai (Japanese: 新井 貴浩, born January 30, 1977, in Naka-ku, Hiroshima) is a Japanese-Korean former professional baseball player.

A week later, he lost count of the number of outs and threw away the ball after a double play, allowing a runner to score.

Finally entering the regular lineup at age 25, he split his time between first base and third in 2002 and batted .287/.342/.514 with 28 homers.

Before the 2005 season, he spent four days and three nights at a Buddhist temple to help his focus, adjusting his swing and improved drastically, putting up a .305/.353/.603 line with 91 runs, 43 homers, 94 RBI and 326 total bases.

He was 6th in the Central League in RBI, was third in sacrifice flies (9, one behind co-leaders Alex Ramirez and Shuichi Murata) and 10th in slugging.

Arai moved to the Hanshin Tigers as a free agent for the 2008 season and spent 7 years with club.

In 2016, Arai batted .300 with 19 home runs and 101 RBIs, contributing to the Carp's Central League title following a 25 years hiatus.

His 2-run homer off of Suk-min Yoon broke a scoreless duel against South Korea in the 6th inning but the Japanese staff blew the lead.

Arai was 10th in the preliminary round in slugging (.563) In the opening round, Arai's 6 RBI tied Nate Schierholtz, Atsunori Inaba, Matthew Brown, Alexeis Bell and Giorvis Duvergel for 4th, trailing Alfredo Despaigne, Dae-ho Lee and Michel Enríquez.