NPB Bullet Points: Monthly MVPs, Darvish the Hockey Player

» 06 June 2011 » In nichibei, npb »

First links roundup in a while, as usual all in Japanese today.

  • The monthly MVPs were announced yesterday. In the Pacific League, Yu Darvish and Tadahito Iguchi won, while Wladimir Balentien and Tetsuya Utsumi took home the prizes in the Central League. It’s nice to see Balentien get the award this month as I think he got robbed in April.
  • At an elementary school visit, Darvish was asked “why did you start to play baseball?”, to which he answered “when I was an elementary school student I also played ice hockey but the practices were tough.” I could see Darvish as a defenseman with great reach.
  • Nippon Ham racked up a team scoreless streak of 52 innings last week, tying the NPB record set by Hanshin in 1942. After the streak came to an end Saturday against Yakult, Nippon Ham immediately went out and put up back-to-back shutouts against Yomiuri, so they already have another 18 inning scoreless streak. Nippon Ham has a cool 2.21 team ERA, which amazingly is second to Softbanks 2.15.
  • My re-translation of Alex Cabrera’s comments regarding his 350th NPB home run wound up getting translated to Spanish for a Venezuelan publication. Now that this has gone through a few iterations I’d love to see how close this Spanish translation comes to Cabu’s original remarks.
  • Cleveland minor leaguer Tooru Murata has a blog going. One post that caught my eye was this one, in which he writes about traveling by bus, saying “the air conditioning is too strong so the bus is too cold. I lose the feeling in my fingertips.” Murata seems to be on the DL, but he has a good K:BB ratio so far this year. He very experienced for his level though.
  • Orix is selling “pro model uniforms” jerseys this summer, for JPY 34,500.
  • This photo was taken above Hakkodate Ocean Stadium in Hokkaido back on May 15th.
  • Personal non-news observation #1: I haven’t watched much major league baseball at all this year, but yesterday I watched a bit of the Giants game against Colorado. The Giants started a righthanded #32, who I had never seen before, and I kept thinking “wow, this guy is great, who is he?” It turned out to be former Hanshin and Orix pitcher Ryan Vogelsong.
  • Personal non-news observation #2: I don’t think any pitcher in NPB enjoys what he does as much as Orix’s Yuki Nishi does. I’ve really enjoyed watching him this season.

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  1. Patrick
    passerby
    06/06/2011 at 10:56 am Permalink

    Looks like this is where Darvish played ice hockey. Also, the fist Japanese NHL player graduated from Tohoku High.

  2. Patrick
    Patrick
    07/06/2011 at 3:47 pm Permalink

    Also, the fist Japanese NHL player graduated from Tohoku High.

    Was that the goalie Fukufuji?

  3. Patrick
    passerby
    07/06/2011 at 5:52 pm Permalink

    I believe so. Or whoever graduated from Tohoku. I don’t watch hockey 😉

  4. Patrick
    simon
    07/06/2011 at 9:24 pm Permalink

    Yup, Fukufuji went to Tohoku High. Never heard of Darvish playing hockey as a kid before, totally out of the blue considering how minor a sport hockey is in Kansai, and his dad being a former pro soccer player. Neat.

    The NPB run environment is historically low so far this year, like 1950’s low with the new ball.
    http://www.baseball-lab.jp/column_detail/&blog_id=16&id=144
    Which partially explains all the pitching success and scoreless streaks already.