NPB Tracker

Ken Kadokura wants to continue his career with an MLB organization, and Sports Hochi is reporting that the pitcher is already reaching out to the Cardinals and Orioles. I suspect the teams he’s starting with were among those that showed interest in him during the offseason.

Couple of random thins I’ve done over the last few weeks…

• An online radio appearance I made in February is now available as a podcast.
• I answered a few questions on Ken Takahashi for the Mets section of baseballdigest.com.
• I’ll be providing content to rotowire.com this season for a select group of players. 
• JapanBall.com has republished my league standings predictions for this year.

The NPB season opened last night, 4/3, and I was remiss in only giving it a passing mention. Here are some highlights:

• Hisashi Iwakuma got the better of Yu Darvish, with Rakuten beating Nippon Ham 3-1. Darvish pitched a complete game in a losing effort, while Iwakuma went six innings, allowing one run while throwing only 59 pitches. Highlights are available on YouTube.
• Tsuyoshi Wada struck out 14 Orix Buffaloes in an 8-0 shutout victory. SoftBank may have to prove me wrong about their offense.
• Colby Lewis defeated countryman Seth Greisinger in the Carp’s 6-3 win over the Giants.
• Kevin Mench went 0-4 in his Hanshin debut, continuing his spring slump, but the Tigers beat the Swallows 5-2.

All the box scores in Japanese but I’ll have an English source for them soon. The WBC live chats were fun, I’m going to try doing that again during the season, if a) the time difference is reasonable and b) we can find a reliable live stream.

And in other brief news, yu-darvish.com is now an NPB Tracker property.