NPB in English: Policy Shifts, Player Movements, KBO
There’s plenty of excellent English-language content being authored on Japanese and Asian baseball. Here are links to a few examples.
- Wayne Graczyk of the Japan Times discuss’s the Central League’s consideration of having teams announce their starting pitchers in advance, as opposed to the keep policy of keeping them secret until lineups are exchanged prior to each game. Such a policy shift would put an end to the teisatsu member tactic of inserting a player in the lineup, immediately to be removed once the opposing starter is known.
- John E. Gibson of the Daily Yomiuri has an update on pitcher DJ Houlton, who moved from Softbank to Yomiuri this offseason.
- A message thread on JapaneseBaseball.com lists this year’s KBO foreign players. I occasionally get asked about this, so it’s nice to have this list.
- Jason Coskrey of the Japan Times looks at Yomiuri’s offseason decision to effectively swap Alex Ramirez for Shuichi Murata.
- Upon the news of Marc Kroon’s retirement, Coskrey tweeted a link to his 2009 story about Kroon’s Nippon Series performance.
- JapaneseBaseball.com founder Michael Westbay has been contributing articles to the bible of Japanese baseball, Baseball Magazine. He’s posted his most recent in English to Google+.
- KBO fan Allen Wolf penned an op-ed for the Korean Times, covering the Orioles’ recent infraction over prospect Kim Seong-min. Wolf observes that “The KBO resembles an insecure autocratic regime that is desperately clinging to misguided ways in an attempt to maintain the status quo.”
I’m always on the lookout for new blogs and sources of content on Japanese baseball. If you know of any that I don’t link to, let me know.