With new members joining the club and more responsibilities piling up, including evaluations on the other players, Minami decides to impliment 'top management', splitting the various tasks amongst herself, Masayoshi, Ayano and Hanae. Minami becomes concerned that the growing number of applicants will result in many players never seeing the field, as well as leaving some of the other clubs empty-handed. She decides to focus on 'optimizing', interviewing each applicant and reducing them from 30 to 12 based on why they want to join the club, whilst reccomending those who didn't make the cut to other clubs, though she forgets about the evaluations in the process. After thinking about her observations and the interviews, Minami and Makoto manage to decide on a starting lineup for the upcoming tournament, appointing Masayoshi as the team captain.

四月となり、三年生になったみなみたちは甲子園出場をかけた最後の夏までのわずかな期間を有効に使うために『ノーバント・ノーボール作戦』にポイントを絞った練習を始める。そんな程高野球部には、評判を聞きつけた新入生たちの入部希望が殺到するが、増えすぎた部員のせいで練習に支障がでないか懸念されるようになる。加地に人事担当に任命されたみなみは、程高野球部に必要な人材とはどんな人材なのかを考えて悩み始める。