NPB Tracker

While my baseball consumption has not returned to it’s previous levels, my itch to write has returned, so tonight I’m taking a hiatus from my hiatus to share a few thoughts on the season so far.

• After years of anticipation, Yu Darvish, has made his Major League debut. The results have been mixed — lots of strikeouts, lots of walks. The walks are a surprise to me; the mid-season struggles are not. I must admit that fate has conspired against me, and I haven’t seen a single Darvish start all the way through this year.
• Nippon Ham has carried on without Darvish, currently leading the Pacific League by a game over Seibu. 24 year-old lefty Mitsuo Yoshikawa took advantage of the hole left by Darvish, and is enjoyed a breakout season. While he lacks Darvish’s eye-popping dominance, a 10-4 record with a 1.91 ERA isn’t too shabby.
• I never thought I’d see Ichiro traded, but last month it happened. It felt more like Ichiro was on the path to retirement this season, but his bat has woken up a bit with the Yankees. Perhaps playing for a winning time will revive his career.
• The Japanese Players Association is threatening to sit out next year’s World Baseball Classic if WBC Inc doesn’t give them a bigger share of the revenue. So far neither side is willing to budge. I hope they can work out some sort of agreement because a Japanese boycott would be bad for both sides.
• I didn’t get to finish my predictions this spring, but every year I think that Chunichi is going to stumble and that Seibu is going to be good. And, every year I’m wrong, at least about the Chunichi side of the prediction. This year was no exception. I thought Chunichi was set for a big step backwards, but they’re comfortably in second place in the Central, and had been in the hunt for first until Yomiuri started to pull away. Seibu got off to a rough start and appeared to be headed for a disappointing season, but has righted the ship and is now in the hunt for a league title.
• I was going to write something about Brad Penny here but I don’t think I’ll bother.
• Softbank veteran Hiroki Kokubo announced his retirement last week. Otsukare-sama.
• Yomiuri veteran and personal favorite Yoshinobu Takahashi slugged his 300th career home run last week. Jason Coskrey has more.
• The two young players I’ve enjoyed watching the most this year? Hiroshima’s Yusuke Nomura and Yokohama DeNA’s Sho Aranami.
• While it doesn’t stack up to MLB’s three perfect games this season, NPB has seen a pair of no-hitters this year: Toshiya Sugiuchi’s against Rakuten on May 30, and Kenta Maeda’s against DeNA on April 6. Although, I did not witness either of these games, I did catch a pair of near no-hitters. Another personal favorite, Daisuke Miura, took a no-no into the 9th against Hanshin on May 12, but pinch-hitter Shinjiro Hiyama put up a veteran at-bat, working a full count before finally hitting a long single. Hanshin eventually scored and Miura lost his shutout, but won the game. The other was another Sugiuchi gem, thrown on May 4 against Hanshin. The only solid contact I recall Sugiuchi surrendering happened to be the only hit Hanshin managed, a sharp single, hit mid-game by Takashi Toritani. The game lacked the drama of a late-innings no-hit bid, but was a dominant performance nonetheless.

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. So long, in fact, that the draft post had some links from July in it. Between when I started this and now, some interesting random things have happened. Here are a few of them.

• The Orix Buffaloes promoted Freddy Ballestas to their shihaika roster back in July.
• Also in July, Softbank lefty Tsuyoshi Wada took home his 100th career win. He achieved the feat in his 200th career game, the eight fastest pace of all time and the fastest for a lefty, ahead of teammate Toshiya Sugiuchi.
• In other Wada news, Tsuyoshi reached the service time requirements for free agency on September 16 and is widely expected to make a run at an MLB contract this offseason. Said Wada: “I’m honestly happy [about reaching free agency]. I haven’t had a chance to think about it yet. [The team and] I haven’t had a detailed discussion yet, but I’ve been told I’m needed.” He looked pretty happy about the achievement.
• Hiroshima is holding a tryout on September 24th, for men aged 17 to 24 and over 175 cm tall. This is aimed at Japanese, NPB draft-eligible players.
• Sport Hochi speculates that Yokohama could release all eight of their foreign players this offseason. I suspect they’ll hold on to their Taiwanese prospects but move on from the rest.
• Whomever runs the official Orix Buffaloes Twitter feed wants to attend UEFA Champion League matches.
• A fan fell on the field during the September 16th Swallows-Carp game in Hiroshima, after climbing the outfield fence trying to retrieve a ball thrown into the stands by Yakult outfielder Norichika Aoki. Aoki commented, “he seemed pretty drunk. I’m glad that he seemed to not get hurt.”
• Journalist Misako Hida recently did an interesting interview with Kei Igawa for the Japanese version of the Wall Street Journal. Among the insights: Igawa wants to sign with an MLB organization that will give him a chance to reach the majors, he doesn’t get recognized much when he goes out, and he realized the Yankees didn’t know him when the GM and manager asked what his best pitch at a meeting during his first year.
• @mykbo had a Tweet this morning saying that Lotte pitcher Lee Yong-hoon has thrown the first minor league perfect game in the history of the KBO.

English language bonus link:

• Twins blog Over the Baggy has some interesting analysis of Tsuyoshi Nishioka’s defense in his first year with the Twins. The author makes some excellent observations. Better, I would say, than anything I’ve done in this area.

The Hiroshima Carp have announced the signing of infielder Brian Barden, according the Chugoku News (among others). Barden opted out of his Rangers contract a couple weeks ago after tearing up the Pacific Coast League. He’ll fill in at third base for the Carp, who currently have Chad Tracy sidelined.

Hiroshima currently stands at 29-36-5, three games behind Hanshin for the third Central League playoff spot. The Carp are currently last in the CL with 18 home runs and fifth with 214 runs scored, so any punch Barden brings to the lineup will be a big plus.

The Hiroshima Carp are looking to import some righthanded power in veteran slugger Scott McClain. Negotiations are reportedly going well and McClain is expected to head across the Pacific in May.

McClain is kind of a story of perseverance; he hit his first MLB home runs last year with the Giants at age 36. He has some NPB experience, having spent parts of four seasons with the Seibu Lions in the early 00’s. The Carp had pretty good results with their last veteran suketto acquisition (Alex Ochoa) and McClain figures to be a solid addition to their lineup.

First bullet points of the new year… let’s get started.

Japanese Articles

• The Tadahito Iguchi rumor mill is heating up a little. According to Nikkan Sports by way of Sports Nifty, the Chiba Lotte Marines are prepared to start the negotiations at 2 years, 400m yen ($4.4m at the current exchange rate).  The article speculates that they could go a little higher as they have the diasppointing Julio Zuleta’s 260m yen ($2.86m) annual salary coming off the books.
• Nikkan Sports reports that Daisuke Matsuzaka will be training with his former team, the Seibu Lions in preparation for the World Baseball Classic. Matsuzaka will train with Seibut at his own request.
• Nippon Ham manager Masataka Nashida has announced that Yu Darvish will be his opening day starter. Not really news, but it’ll be a tight schedule with the WBC wrapping up shortly beforehand. In the same breathe, Nashida said that he wants to face Hanshin in the Japan Series this year.
• Yomiuri Giants reliever and 2008 R0Y Tetsuya Yamaguchi will be doing his pre-camp training in Arizona at the Fischer Sports Gym, where Randy Johnson works out in the offseason. In other training news, Yakult reliever Ryota Igarashi is also heading to Arizona to train at the same gym Nomar Garciaparra uses.
• The Hiroshima Carp have been flooded with a deluge of orders for their new uniform.

English Articles

• The Saitama Seibu Lions are changing their look that’s suited them pretty well over the years. Simon isn’t a fan, and I have to say neither am I.
• Deanna racked up quite an impressive pile of ticket stubs in 2008.
• 2008 Sawamura Award winner Hisashi Iwakuma signed a 3-year, 1.1bn yen ($12.1m) deal with the Rakuten Eagles. This is a rare case of a top player getting a multi-year deal prior to reaching free agency in Japan.
• Jim Allen has a couple of players to watch in 2009.

Like many teams before them, the Hiroshima Carp are taking their stadium move as an opportunity to refresh the their image with a new uniform design. Nice simple design, doing away the pinstripes of the old version. Looks good to me, aside from “Carp” script on the home uniform looking a little plasticy. For fun, here’s a look at the team’s 70’s era uniforms, and a CG video tour of the new ballpark.

Yokohama isn’t moving to a new stadium, but could definitely use an image change after years of being the Central League’s doormat. The BayStars’ new uniforms are clearly inspired by what they’ve been wearing for interleague games for the last few years. Like Hiroshima, they’ve ditched the pinstripes on their home uniform, but added them to their road grays, which aren’t really gray at all. I can’t say I’m a fan of the collar on the home uniforms but I do like the road version.

Four Japanese Articles to share today:

• Add the Softbank Hawks to the list of NPB teams interested in Nelson Cruz. It turns out that Softbank was trying to get Cruz last summer at the trading deadline, which I speculated about a few weeks ago. The Hawks are also interested in Padres reliever Brian Falkenborg.
• Indians GM Mark Shapiro expects the bidding for Junichi Tazawa to reach $7M. The Indians are not interested in Tazawa, nor are the Yankees or Diamondbacks.
• Shingo Takatsu is hoping to play another year in Korea. Shingo saved 8 games with an 0.86 era in 18 games for the Woori Heroes this season.
• The Hiroshima Carp’s new stadium will be known as Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium Hiroshima. Kind of a mouthful, I wonder if they could’ve just gone with one “zoom”.

After a short break from writing, I’m back with a few highlights from my weekend reading. I’ve been enjoying Sanspo’s Baseball Photo Ranking lately.

The next big piece of content I have on tap for NPB Tracker is (surprise) an essay on the Junichi Tazawa situation. Look out for that in the next day or two.

Japanese Articles:

• Construction of the new Hiroshima Citizen’s Stadium is underway, and you can follow its progress on this blog. Thanks to Erik Schullstrom for the link.
• Nippon Ham Fighters starter Ryan Glynn has a 28-inning scoreless streak going.
• Who says Japanese players don’t play hard? Here’s a shot of Yakult’s Masakazu Fukukawa taking out Yomiuri’s Shigeyuki Furuki on a slide into second base.
• Yokohama’s teenage righthander Atori made his first career appearance and hit 94 mph on the gun.
• The Eneos Industrial League team will be travelling to Brazil to play a seven-game exhibition series with Brazil’s national team to commerate 100 years of Japanese immigration to Brazil. I think this is great, I’d love to see baseball expand more deeply into Brazil.
• Obligatory Junichi Tazawa item: here’s a blogger who couldn’t care less if Tazawa skips NPB. “A guy who wants to go to the Majors can go. That’s it.” Well said.
• Hanshin has won a number of games in walk-off fashion recently, here are some YouTube clips of the team’s win on Sept 11: Jeff Williams shuts down Yakult in the top of the ninth, K’ing Norichika Aoki for the final out, Shinjiro Hiyama and Ikuro Katsuragi start the comeback, Akihiro Yano ties the game, and Makoto Imaoka wins it.

English Articles:

• Wayne Graczyk gives us a little insight into what makes fireballing Giants closer Marc Kroon tick.

Going with all Japanese articles for today’s bullet points, since I haven’t really read anything in English for the last couple of days.

Japanese Articles:

• A Japanese blogger has set up a site to protest Senichi Hoshino’s prospective involvement in next year’s World Baseball Classic. The movement seems to be spreading, as banners like this and this are beginning to appear elsewhere in the Japanese blogoshpere. Update: The campaign won’t have to continue on very long as Hoshino has already said he won’t accept the job if it’s offered.
• The Hiroshima Carp will be be wearing throwback uniforms from the team’s late 70’s/early 80’s golden age. Carp Blog has a pic and good graphics in general.
• Chunichi Dragons blog Negative Dragons reported that 2nd baseman Masahiro Araki will not excercise his right to become a free agent and stay in Nagoya. Sponichi reported the same news the following day. I’ve updated the 2009 NPB free agent list.
• At the risk of stoking the flames: scouts from six major league teams including the Yankees watched Yu Darvish shut down the Lions on Sept 9 (English Box Score courtesy of JapaneseBaseball.com). I guess this is what Gene Michael was doing in Japan. Sanspo re-iterated that “Darvish has not expressed any intent of going to MLB and is affectionate toward his team, but MLB teams won’t leave him alone“.
• Chunichi pitcher Hitoki Iwase become the first NPB closer to record four consecutive 30+ save seasons.

Question for bullet points readers: do you enjoy the Japanese content or the English content more? What topics do you find most interesting?

English articles only today, and a fairly random collection.

• The Softbank Source at JapaneseBaseball.com reports on the Hawks’ most recent game.
• Japanese Baseball Cards commemorates Ichiro’s 3000th hit by posting a card from his beardless days.
• Deanna celebrates Masa Yamamoto’s 200th victory (!!!!).
• I happened across an account of a fan’s first visit to a live NPB game.
• Also found this entertaining Hiroshima Carp blog.