Marinerds, etc.

I know a lot of people thought I was crazy when I said I thought Chunichi Dragons elder statesman Masa Yamamoto would reach 200 wins by his 43rd birthday on August 11th, but I believed in him and tonight he DID it!


(image from Mainichi / Yahoo sports)

The Giants got out to a quick 1-0 lead on a sacrifice fly by Ogasawara's clean-shaven doppleganger, but then they would only have FOUR MORE runners over the course of the night as Masa pitched a COMPLETE GAME, striking out 7, walking 1, and allowing only that first-inning run. The Dragons tied it up 1-1 in the second on a solo home run by Tomas De la Rosa, had the go-ahead 2-1 run batted in by Norihiro Nakamura in the 3rd inning, and then Hirokazu Ibata hit a solo home run to lead off the 5th inning and knock Giants starter Hiroshi Kisanuki out of the game. Kazuhiro Wada singled in a run and another came in on a balk by Kentaro Nishimura (see? you are CURSED, Nishimura, ever since you broke Hichori), to make it 5-1 overall.

Masa even got a doage, how cool is that?


(image from Mainichi)

He is the 24th pitcher in NPB history to achieve this milestone. The 23rd, if you're curious, was another old lefty named Kimiyasu Kudoh, who did it in 2004. (In a weird coincidence, I got a Kudoh pinbadge out of the capsule machine down in Yokohama tonight.) It gives him automatic entry into the Meikyukai (the "Golden Players Club", not to be confused with the official Hall of Fame), which has membership requirements of 200 wins or 250 saves for pitchers.

Official Dragons site page about Masa's achievement

Mainichi photo retrospective of Masa's career, which is really awesome

My own Masa-heavy photo set from when the Dragons played in Chiba on June 4th

As for me, I spent yesterday in Sendai having a blast with the northern Fighters fans, and then went to Yokohama tonight to watch the Baystars actually win a game. More on both of those later.

I took a day off from work on June 4th and went to Chiba for the Marines-Dragons game, and got to sit in a very good place for taking pictures. I spent batting practice doing things like interviewing players and taking pictures, and then spent the game experimenting with my camera's ISO at higher levels to see how nighttime stuff would come out. I don't have a COOL camera like the pros, and since I was on the 3rd base side most of my game shots are of Dragons, but here's the set of stuff I took. Click on any of these photos to see the set (or click here -- Marines vs. Dragons, June 4 2008).


This is my favorite shot I took all night, of Masa Yamamoto. I had a goal this year of getting to see him start a game.


This is Kazuyoshi Tatsunami, aka Mr. Dragons. I could go on and on about why he is awesome, but people would tell me to shut up.


Shunsuke Watanabe wears high socks now, which is awesome.


Doala gets down on one knee and proposes to Rine-chan, but she turns him down because she's actually in love with Morino.

Anyway, this game was actually pretty suspenseful. There was a lot on the line -- if Masa won, he'd be one game closer to his 200 career wins, and if the Marines won, it'd be Bobby Valentine's 1500th career win between Japan and the US (but we didn't find that out until AFTER the game). And there was some weird melon mascot going around before the game. I still don't quite get that one.

Unfortunately for Masa, Julio Zuleta hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the first to put the Marines ahead 2-0, and the Dragons never quite caught up. In the bottom of the second, Takehara hit an "inside-the-park home run", where he really hit a high fly ball to left that Kazuhiro Wada totally lost in the lights and so Takehara bolted around the bases and instead of having an out, or a double, had a home run. Crazy. That made it 3-1.

The teams chipped away at each other for a while. Masa came out in the bottom of the 5th with the score at 5-2, sadly. Poor guy. The game continued at that score until the top of the 7th, where -- as is normal in a Shunsuke start these days -- Tyrone Woods launched a gigantic 2-run homer way out to centerfield to bring the score to 5-4, and make things a little more interesting.

(I say normal, because I have seen several Shunsuke starts and that's pretty much what seems to always happen -- a few decent innings, a huge home run, and he comes out.)

Anyway, the Marines amazingly managed to hold onto the lead in the 8th and 9th, with Kawasaki and Ogino both pitching strong innings. Kawasaki even managed 3 strikeouts (and Kazuki reached first on an error). Ogino ran into a little bit of trouble in the 9th, but then got Kazuhiro Wada to ground into a double play to end the game at 5-4. And then there was a big ceremony to give Bobby flowers, which he seemed as confused about as the rest of us. But it's a pretty great accomplishment! Congratulations, Bobby!

On a Marines note, I'm glad to see Satozaki back in action, and I'm glad to see Shunichi Nemoto kicking butt. And Zuleta is up too, which is also good for them. And naturally there's Shunsuke, but there's always Shunsuke. As for the Dragons, it was really great to talk to Tyrone for a bit before the game -- and the best part is, he had explained how he was hitting 3rd and his job was to drive in Arakibata, and then he drove in Ibata twice, including that big home run! I guess it's just an average night on the job for him.

This is going to be another Marines-full weekend for me -- Sunday I'll be going to Chiba to see Marines vs. Hanshin, and then Monday I'm planning to go to the Lotte ni-gun stadium and catch Marines vs. Rakuten, assuming it doesn't rain.

3 Down, 4 to go!

Chunichi's elder statesman, 42-year-old lefty pitcher Masa Yamamoto, has been doing a great job of looking like the same guy who pitched a no-hitter in the fall of 2006. Last year, he was sporting signs of "RETIRE NOW BEFORE IT GETS WORSE" with his 2-10 record and 5.07 ERA. But this year -- which by all indications is a "Good Masa" year -- he is 3-0 with a microscopic 0.45 ERA in 4 games (his first game, he came out after an inning with back pain). Last night the Dragons beat the Eagles 3-1, with Masa getting the win. Now he is up to 196 career wins! Fantastic!

When will Masa get to 200 wins? My bet is it will be around August 11th, his 43rd birthday. Wouldn't that be awesome?

I do want to note that I took a brief look at some stathead stuff for him though. My calculations might be slightly off (I'm using 3 as the constant for FIP, too), but:

              Real ERA   FIP     Real OBA   BABIP
Masa 2006       3.32     3.19      .240     .275
Masa 2007       5.07     4.69      .292     .324
Masa 2008       0.45     2.70      .191     .240

I'm gonna say that phrase that baseball statheads love to say all the time: "He's due for a regression to the mean", which basically means he was a little unlucky last year, and has been a little lucky so far this year. But, people aren't hitting homeruns off him so far, although that might change when he faces a lineup that isn't Rakuten, Hiroshima, or Yakult.

Please, Masa -- stay strong, win (at least) four more games, and make us all proud of you.

And then there were two

Orix Buffaloes manager Terry Collins finally realized exactly how futile it is trying to manage the Buffaloes and resigned as Orix manager after Wednesday's game, where the Buffaloes split a subway series with the Kansai kitties, claiming that he no longer has enough fire and passion for the game to continue leading club. The rest of the foreign coaches (Debus and Brown) also left with him. There's a bit of ongoing discussion here on japanesebaseball.com. My personal feeling on the matter is that it's a surprising and sudden event to me, but overall I am not surprised that it happened.

Either way, it gives a new meaning to the Lotte-Hiroshima matchup this coming weekend, as those are the only two teams in Japan that still have foreign managers.

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

Uniforms are SUCH A FRIGHT!

These are the ugliest interleague uniforms I have ever seen in my entire life.

Seriously. I think they've officially gone into "weirder than Lotte" territory with these...