The timeskip really fucked this manga over for me.
I'm not mad about the pitcher rival, but about the development. For instance, let's compare with Daiya no Ace. Sawamura in the beginning is made to be the a diamond in the rough when he is scouted, but then appears Fururya, a guy who wasnt even scouted and appears to be more talented than him. This rivalry is estabelished early on and the story goes from there. But even then, they're around the same level because Furuya is also very inexperienced and has problems of his own when comes to pitching. When Sawamura is learning pitches, improving his form, Furuya is also learning pitches (he doesn't just throws fastballs!). The important thing here is that they have guidance when it comes to learning (catchers and coaches mainly). This makes a good and developed rivalry, because even though people like to kid saying "Furuya no Ace", they're basically on same level and have almost equal screentime.
Bungo is made to be a very talented inexeperience player who goes to continuous and rapid growth, then a time skip happens and Eita appears out of nowhere (wait, not out of nowhere because he was estabelished 2~chapters before the timeskip, which is basically jackshit), who surpasses Bungo right in the beginning of the second year and becomes the ace. How I am supposed to believe in that crap? Bungo basically learns nothing on his second year and just grind on his fucking fundies??? I know Eita is probably a lot smarter when it comes to training (he wears glasses ffs!! 🤪), but how come no one goes to Bungo and helps to guide him into a certain path? They know he is talented so why just go "yea, keep doing that training routine and only throw fast balls that at some point you're going to improve" (I know that this chapter is basically focused on doing exactly this, but still. half of the year already has passed, took fucking long enough to do something huh). Also, badly introducing a pitcher rival on the same team this late in the story is fucking retarded (1/3 of the manga).
tl;dr: early rivalry good, late rivalry bad
Eita is kinda creepy tbh. First the guy always tries to top Bungo , now he's going after the girl that likes him? I don't see clearly what he is trying to achieve here. Maybe the next step is becoming Bungo itself.
Also, can the author stop with romantic bullshit? Gets annoying real fast (only time that I thought it was ok and kinda funny was the stalker guy)
I fucking hate the fastball mentality of this manga. It stops a lot of the growth from Bungo.
Yelp, I think I got it all out of my system, sorry for the long comment. Anyways, thanks for the chapter!