NPB Tracker

Okay, time to come out of hiatus with my first NPB Tracker post of the year.

Player Personnel

• Nippon Ham signed Bob Keppel and Brian Wolfe
• Yomiuri picked up Edgar Gonzalez, the former Padres infielder (Adrian’s brother)
• Rakuten signed Andy Phillips, whose option was not excercised by the Carp
• Yakult signed Diamondbacks AAA arm Tony Barnette
• Seibu signed NPB veteran reliever Brian Sikorski and AAA veteran Dee Brown
• Oakland signed NPB Tracker favorite Lenny DiNardo. I’m glad he’s back in the Bay Area and hope to see him with the A’s this year
• Another personal favorite, Shingo Takatsu, signed with the Sinon Bulls in Taiwan. Takatsu wants to be the first pitcher to record a save in NPB, MLB, KBO, and Taiwan’s CBL
• Colby Lewis signed with the Rangers
• Dan Johnson returned to the Rays
• SoftBank and Hiroshima will continue to look for pitching through spring training

Did I miss anyone?

Other News

• MLB and NPB are discussing holding a global world series between the champions from the two leagues. It doesn’t seem as close as initially reported, but I would love to see this happen. More later…
• Having failed to get any NPB offers, former Orix Buffaloe Katsuaki Furuki is moving into the ring and becoming a figher
• Yusei Kikuchi has begun working out for his first pro spring training. And believer or not, he’s walking on air
• More jibba-jabba about Yu Darvish going to MLB
• Matt Murton will play center field for Hanshin

Any other big stories over the last few weeks that I didn’t include?

Sanspo is reporting on Hanshin’s import pitching shopping list, and is naming names. Tigers manager Akinobu Mayumi says that Hanshin is after two middle relievers and one starter, to fill in for the departing Scott Atchison and Jeff Williams.

The names we have are:

• Adrian Burnside (recently released by Yomiuri)
• Brad Thomas (two-year Japan veteran, had been in Korea)
• Jo Jo Reyes (Atlanta Braves)
• Wil Ledezma (Washington Nationals)
• Juan Morillo (Minnesota Twins)
• Bob Keppel (Minnesota Twins)

Burnside didn’t appear at all with Yomiuri’s top team this year, so you’d have to figure he’d be a low-risk, low-investment type of signing. Thomas probably fits into the same category.

Reyes is an interesting name. He’s still pretty young, and I had the impression that he was a decent prospect for the Braves at one point. Morillo, as I recall from his time with the Rockies, is a hard thrower with bad command. I don’t know much about the other guys.

Two guys I’d like to see get a shot in Japan, with Hanshin or elsewhere, are Lenny DiNardo and Bobby Korecky. I couldn’t understand why DiNardo didn’t get more of a look in Oakland, when I saw him I thought he could contribute in the bigs (though I didn’t realize he had such a troubling k/bb rate). And Korecky is a guy who I haven’t seen, but has performed consistently well in the minors but never gotten a real shot to last in MLB.