Marinerds, etc.

There is a little banter battle going back and forth in the English-language sports dailies here in Japan about the entire Pete Rose dissing Ichiro thing, so since I just spent a whole bunch of time reading these, I figure I might as well link them.

I guess this starts with Rick Reilly's story on Pete Rose getting to recreate his record-setting Ty-Cobb-beating single in Cincinnati. (Unrelated, but I was there at Veterans Stadium when Pete Rose broke Stan Musial's NL hit record.)

In that article, there are two choice quotes that (rightfully) kind of piss off Ichiro fans:

"Do you realize that Ichiro has had three or four seasons where about 27, 28 percent of his hits are infield hits? The guy has to be the luckiest guy in the history of the world to get that many infield hits!"

"OK, you gonna let me go over to Japan and play for five or six years? Nothing against Japanese baseball, but it's basically Triple-A ball."

So then Rob Neyer writes, If Ichiro Had Been Born in California... and points out that Ichiro is pretty much the exact kind of player you would pick to reach 4000 hits, were he to play his entire career in the MLB, which wasn't an option.

A week or so later (Sep 16), Jim Allen, who writes the Hot Corner for the Daily Yomiuri, and is a guy who's been here in Japan watching baseball since Ichiro was in junior high school, takes up the torch to point out that calling NPB AAA-level isn't quite fair, AND that Rose had "daida ore" privileges as Reds manager to get himself into lineups long past his prime.

(Around the same time, Joe Posnanski also chimes in on the "How great is Ichiro really?" debate. NPB card guy linked this one in the comments.)

A week after that (Sep 25), Jason Coskrey of the Japan Times takes a somewhat neutral stance and just points out that in the Ichirose debate, the numbers won't lie.

And then a week after THAT (Oct 2), Jason's boss Jack Gallagher goes off on a Ichiro is a selfish player who will never be anywhere as good as Pete Rose rant out of nowhere, asserting that "Ichiro is a great player who puts himself first," and "Ichiro plays for stats, while Rose played to win." Which didn't sit right with me, but my general feeling is that it really doesn't matter and you simply can't compare the two guys meaningfully.

So today, Oct 7, I'm reading Jim Allen again, and he wrote another article to point out exactly what was wrong with the JT article. What amuses me is not necessarily the way Jim states his points but the way he refers to that "other rival newspaper writer".

It's kind of neat, though at the same time it's like sitting in on a debate being conducted by carrier pigeon correspondence.

Either way, there have been a whole lot of pretty crazy hitting achievements this season. What I find even crazier when I think about it is that this was Ichiro's 10th season in the MLB already; I remember visiting Japan in 2001 when it was his first season there and you could see Mariners games on TV pretty much anywhere in the country you went. Time flies!

Oh, geez, I didn't even notice this, but Monday actually marked the two-year anniversary of me starting this blog.

Everything I said last year still applies, plus all of the awesome new faces I got to know around here in the last year.

Offhand, I think the highlights of Marinerds' second season were, generally speaking:
- pinch-blogging for Jeff at Lookout Landing
- playing fantasy baseball with the Phloggers (and placing 3rd!)
- getting more involved contributing at japanesebaseball.com (and being a wannabe Gary Garland during the offseason)
- the Fighters winning the Japan Series
- my trip to Japan for a few weeks last fall
- getting the Nikon D50 (and immediately attacking the A's with it)
- writing more song parodies and more player conversation parodies
- attempting to run the Seattle Baseball Book Club, even if it fizzled in the end (if anyone wants to restart it, let me know, I'll help)
- and of course, going to way too many games, some of which the Mariners even won!

I'm probably forgetting things. I need to sleep.

I have no idea what the future holds, nor whether I'll still be writing this thing in another year, but hey, thanks to everyone who's been along for the ride, and especially to those of you who left comments or emails to let me know when I was being particularly funny or stupid. You guys rock.

In his most recent blog entry, Bobby Valentine mentioned something extraordinarily cool:

After the game many things were developed; one was that I had a final meeting with Satozaki, a fabulous catcher who was elected for the WBC team. Satozaki and I talked for a while and he understood a lot of the messages that I was trying to deliver. Every team needs a great leader, and the leader is usually called a captain, and I was ready to appoint him as the captain of 2007 Chiba Lotte Marines. He took this designation with honor. He had many of the right questions and the answers. I’m sure that he is going to become what I want him to become: the best captain of any team which has ever assembled.

You all know what a huge Tomoya Satozaki fan I am, so this news made me pretty happy. Ganbatte Satozaki!

While I'm at it, I should mention that there have been some neat video shorts on Michael Nakamura's blog. What's awesome about them are that he's interviewed in English -- speaking in his kickass Australian accent -- with Japanese subtitles.

Kazumi Saitoh's finally updating his blog again after a month-and-a-half hiatus, mostly to say "I'm sorry, guys! Spring Training is busy!" At least he posted his Arizona pictures. My gosh, Yoshimi is almost as tall as he is. They both tower over Egawa and Kokubo.

(In case you are wondering, I'm quite aware of the recent Seibu scandal, I just don't particularly feel like talking about it.)

Takuro Ishii wrote about how Shinji Mizushima visited a Yokohama-Softbank game the other day, complete with an awesome picture of a ball he signed. Mizushima is not only the author of Dokaben (a long-running baseball manga which I've mentioned before), but he's also one of the backers of the recently-formed independent Hokushinetsu League. Very cool stuff.

Not to be outdone, Akinori Otsuka makes fun of interns. No, just kidding.

But the real player blogger of the week that takes the cake is lefty pitcher and crazy-creative man CJ Wilson, who posts a "Rangers 911" video that he directed (and acted in). It's pretty disturbing -- Josh Rupe in a Speedo and all -- but nonetheless awesomely funny. Check it out. CJ Wilson is officially my favorite Rangers player ever.

You may or may not have noticed, but I have a link at the bottom of my "Other Baseblogs" part of the sidebar that says "Player Blogs" -- for a while, I actually had links to player blogs along with fan/etc blogs, and then I realized that it was impractical to have them all over there, so I moved them off to a separate page (except for Bobby Valentine and Pat Neshek, because they are Special).

Well, I kept forgetting to update that page as I found more Japanese player blogs, and in addition, all the MLB players who blogged on mlblogs.com pretty much stopped in the offseason, and I don't know how many will be restarting, so I needed to change the status of a few of those too. This year so far I see blogs from CJ Wilson (of the Rangers, who just linked to Akinori Otsuka's blog, which is worth checking out for the cartoon banner alone) seems to have one for this year, and Curtis Granderson of the Tigers, and... it looks like John Rodriguez of the Cardinals might take his up again from last year, but that's about it. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

So I went ahead and added the whole plethora of Japanese player blogs (and a few NPB ones in English, such as Jeff Williams and CJ Nitkowski) that I'd pretty much bookmarked and never added, even though that means I definitely won't have time to read them all now. If nothing else, though, it was fun finding a few new ones, and catching up on the Tigers player blogs from around Valentine's Day thanking all their fans for chocolates. Tsuyoshi Nishioka actually writes in Osaka-ben. I'm fairly amazed that Takuro Ishii writes stuff daily, which is cool. A lot of players have some pretty fun stories from spring training, too.

Another neat thing is that while looking through official player pages and sites, I noticed that the Fighters, Carp, and Giants actually bother putting players' farm team statistics as well as their top-level statistics on their official pages. That's pretty cool. Aside from the last two seasons, I hadn't really been able to get my hands on much farm data at all, though I also haven't looked that hard, I guess.

Anyway, I'm betting a few more MLB player blogs will start up once the season starts, though who knows. I wish Nate Robertson would write one again -- I thought he was really entertaining last year. If I've missed any MLB player blogs in particular, feel free to let me know (there are probably some I've just forgotten that I never bookmarked). I left out listing a whole lot of NPB player blogs on purpose simply because there's just too many, so I tried to limit it to people I find interesting, since I actually try to regularly check in on the sites I link to.

For info about the LL/USSM projection project, see here. (Richie projection discussion is here).
For the tune to this post, see the appropriate commercial here.


The Projection Of Big Richie

He'll bring a ten foot pole to the batter's box
And hit a full fifty-seven knocks
Actually, I put 38.
(Big Richie!)

He'll drive in a hundred runs or more
And ninety times he'll see ball four!
Uh... I'm betting on 50.
(Big Richie!)

We'll have to guess
At his OPS
And his strikeout count?
[SWOOSH!]
We hope it's less.
Who the hell does he think he is? Adam Dunn?
(Big Richiiiieeeee... Big Richiiiieeeee...)

I meant to have some more Japan trip pictures up today, but alas, I got sidetracked yesterday by going to a Super Bull party. Right after that crazy kickoff where the Bears returned it for a touchdown, two more people showed up, so we rewound it on the Tivo before they got downstairs and were like, "Okay, let's all pretend we just started watching," except that when the announcer said something like "The Colts have had some problems blocking their kickoff returns this year," we all lost it and started cracking up.

Peyton Manning is kind of cute, but other than that, I don't recall much from the game besides all of the rain and the ninety billion fumbles and turnovers, which were entertaining on their own. I brought my Terrible Towel with me, as did another Pittsburgh ex-pat, and so whenever anyone came in to check on the game and asked who was winning, she and I would yell "GO STEELERS!!!!" and wave our towels around. I also did a cheer of "E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!!!!!" at one point.

Yeah, see, everything I know about football I learned from marching band. (Before you ask: baritone/euphonium.)

Anyway, the 2007 Community Projections have been kicked off today, and the first one we're attacking is Kenji Johjima. If you somehow read this blog but not Lookout Landing or USSM, read this post to find out more. It's a joint effort between the two blogs this year, in Google Spreadsheets, which is a somewhat surreal experience, as you can sit there and watch other people play with the numbers.

Let's see, what else is up...

Last week the Japanese newspapers were reporting that the NPB is adopting drug testing measures. The penalties may seem light (first offense is a reprimand, second is a 10-day suspension, third is a year, fourth is indefinite) but when you remember that in Japanese society, nobody ever forgets any dishonor to your name -- think Kazuhito Tadano -- a reprimand and the subsequent media circus could be more punishment than you think.

Thanks to Gary Garland starting up his news translations at Japan Baseball Daily again, I feel myself getting sort of lazy, but we'll see. The one wacky thing to me is that he pointed out two new catchers who are being compared to Kenji Johjima, the new Softbank catcher Hiroaki Takaya, and the Chunichi high school catcher Nagamasa Fukuda. However, from my own observation during the Koshien tournament and the Kokoyakyu movie, the one I would most expect to put up Johjima numbers in the future is the Hanshin Tigers draftee Ryohei Hashimoto, from Chiben Wakayama HS. He has a beautifully powerful swing, and it's just a matter of whether he can get his game up to the top level in time to take over for the aging Akihiro Yano, I think (but I also hope they don't rush him like the Lions did with Ginjiro Sumitani last year).

Bobby Valentine mentioned in his blog that Bobby Buckner is at spring training with Lotte. Yes, he is related to Bill Buckner -- it's his son, a high school senior who plays shortstop. Apparently Valentine was college roomates with Buckner, too. Small world!

Speaking of spring training with Lotte, it is apparently so damn hot in Australia right now -- around 100 degrees -- that their practices were moved to 4pm from 10am. My favorite submarine pitcher Shunsuke Watanabe is blogging about it on his website, although to be fair, he's mostly using the hot weather as an excuse to drink lots of Australian beer and wine. Can you blame him?

Speaking of weird spring training food stories, there were some funny recent Hawks pictures in Miyazaki, including Sadaharu Oh receiving a seafood gift (that katsuo fish is like half his height), and the Hawks rookies are learning to make hot dogs? And this is not about food, but Hiroki Kokubo is in ur trenchcoatz stalking ur rookiez. Okay, not really.

Also, I dislike the new Hanshin uniforms, though I think this picture of Fujikawa saying "You got my old number!" to Esteban Yan is pretty funny. And look, it is Ryan Vogelsong.

The Hiroshima Carp have been covering a different player in camp each day for photos. So far they've done Soyogi, Higashide, Arai, and Kurihara. Kurihara says he's going to hit like 40-50 home runs this season. I have no doubt he could do it if he stayed healthy for the whole year. I want to get excited about the Carp this year, I honestly do, but I worry that doing so will jinx them.

I feel kind of bad for Mike Matheny retiring, but alas, these things happen. If his case study helps to prevent and/or treat head trauma and concussions from catchers in the future, though, at least he'll be able to make some impact on the sport, no pun intended.

You know we're big George Sherrill fans around here, and I never did link to his recent article on mlbplayers.com about perseverance and working your way up out of the indy leagues. It's an interesting read.

And on another lefty bullpen note, happy 22nd birthday to Eric O'Flaherty! I'm betting his birthday wish is to break camp with the Mariners this year...

I went to the USSM Pizza Feed tonight.

It was pretty fun. I showed off some of my Japan baseball photos (printed out, I still haven't made a lot of headway in preparing a subset of 2500 pictures for online consumption), got to chat with a whole lot of cool people, and was very entertained by Dave, Derek and Jeff. I only had one slice of pizza, though, as the distribution method (of which there was none) didn't work particularly well. Fortunately, unlike some people, I wasn't there for the food. In retrospect, I was there for the Dave Cameron Comedy Hour, I think.

And yeah, I was fully decked out in Fighters gear (Ogasawara jersey, Fighters hat, little "BB Bear" mascot keychain on my sling bag), as threatened. Oddly, there were very few people wearing baseball-related clothes -- Laurie had an awesome "Doyle #32" jersey, and David J. Corcoran was wearing a Meche t-shirt, and that's about all I recall. I suppose everyone else had come over after work as well.

We all got to watch the Mets-Cardinals game on TV, including the part where So Taguchi came in for his second plate appearance of the postseason, and hit another home run, off Billy Wagner. I tried to organize a cheer of "SPEE-ZEE-OH!" at one point, and was fortunately ignored by everyone.

A whole bunch of people off my blogroll were there, including J of Mariner Minors, the inimitable Jason Churchill of Prospect Insider, and Conor Glassey with his new StopTheWave.com t-shirt. The Everett Aquasox announcer, Pat Dillon, was also there, and we had a nice chat about Japanese baseball, which was cool. And of course, frequent commenters msb, Gomez, Dylan, Mike Snow, Brian-no-relation-to-Matt Thornton, Lauren the Token Chick, and others I'm probably forgetting because it's 3am were also around.

And even though he wasn't there, PositivePaul has me started on another song parody. I've been churning it in my head since this morning, maybe I'll write it this weekend.

Honestly, I wish I could have spent more time just sitting at a table and listening to Dave, Jason, J, and Pat talk about prospects, and learning by osmosis. That's probably my one real regret about the evening -- not using enough time to learn stuff from a room full of good baseball minds. I mean, I'd love the opportunity to just pick, say, Dave Cameron's brain, for baseball knowledge and camera geekery. Oh well -- hopefully there'll be another gathering during the offseason at some point. Maybe when Derek's book comes out...

It's funny, I keep thinking I spend too much time on this blog and should really stop writing it, but then events like this happen and I remember that I'm lucky to be part of a great community like this around here, and renew my time-wasting contract for another season.