NPB Tracker

As the end of the season approaches, we learn who will be released and who is in contention for postseason awards. Japanese links only today.

Japanese Articles:

• Jose Fernandez left Orix’s 10-8 loss to Seibu in the 7th inning after taking a batted ball to the face. He’s out for the remainder of the season, and may be done with Orix. Literally adding insult to injury, the Orix front office commented that “his results don’t match his salary.” Fernandez hit .261 with 15 HR and 61 RBI, and is getting paid 100m yen ($1m) this year.
• Toshiya Sugiuchi is making a play for some Sawamura Award consideration. He K’ed 11 Rakuten Eagles on the 13th, his fourth straight game with double-digit punchouts, becoming the first lefty to ever accomplish the feat in the Pacific League. He now is tied for the lead league with 15 wins and has the lead in strikeouts all to himself.
• But then Yu Darvish said “not so fast” as he returned from injured reserve and shut down the Marines, allowing one run on six hits over eight innings. According to Nikkan Sports, however, the hardest he threw was 148 km/h (91 mph). Not his hardest fastball, but then again he never really needed to extend himself.
• SoftBank has passed the 2,000,000 mark for attendance again this season, reaching the milestone in their 65 home game.
• Hideki Irabu has been granted his release from the independent Kochi Fighting Dogs. He has tendinitis in his right thumb, and won’t be able to return in time to play again this season, so he bit the bullet and is heading home to America to recover. He intends to continue his comeback.
• In place of the loss-making Asia Series, this autumn the Japan and Korea league champions will face off in the Nikan Club Championship. The game will be held on November 14 in Nagasaki.
• Veteran infielder Toshihisa Nishi is done with Yokohama at the end of the year, but wants to continue playing and will search for a new team this offseason.
• Hiroshima is looking to import pitching next year, notably of the lefthanded variety, and has mobilized US scout Eric Schullstrom to find some.

Koshien wrapped up yesterday with a wild finale. If you missed it live, you can still check it out in the Justin.tv archives. Standard justin.tv url-tweaking applies. On to the links…

Japanese Articles:

• Nikkan Sports reports that over 1000 spectators were on hand to see Hideki Irabu’s Kochi debut, but no one in attendance happened to be an NPB scout.
• I’ve seen some variation on this, but I’ll go with Nikkan Sports again: eight of the 12 NPB teams reportedly intend to make Yusei Kikuchi their first pick in this year’s NPB draft. For more on how the NPB draft works, please see our primer on it.
• The swine flu appears to be back in business in Japan. Five Chunichi Dragons, including players and team personnel, have come down with the swine flu. Orix has banned jet balloons once again in an effort to prevent the further spread of the flu.
• Orix LOOGY Tsuyoshi Kikuchihara has qualified for domestic free agency.

English Articles:

• Goro Shigeno live-blogged yesterday’s Koshien final. Despite losing, Nihon Bunri put a great never-say-die effort.
• With Koshien over, Japan will send a team of high school all-stars to Compton, CA for a three-game series against US all-stars. Gen has the Japanese roster, and before you ask, no Yusei Kikuchi will not take part, ostensibly due to his back injury.
• Toshiya Sugiuchi struck out 15 Nippon Ham Fighters on Sunday and has quietly put up another excellent season.
• I’m no Deanna, but I’ve travelled a bit and taken a few pictures. I decided to share a few of the better ones as desktop backgrounds. Give ‘em a look if you’re interested.

Japanese

• Yokohama dai-veteran Kimiyasu Kudoh was assessed with the first ever ball called due to the 15-second rule. He got hit with the call while shaking off signs in the 7th inning of Yokohama’s 10-3 loss to the Giants on the 18th.
• Kudoh’s fellow geezer Hideki Irabu has made his first appearance for Kochi, throwing one inning in a practice game against Shikoku Bank. Gen relays a report that Yokohama might kick the tires on Irabu this offseason.
• The Hiroshima Carp are holding a tryout on September 19 at Mazda Stadium. To qualify you must be between ages 17 and 24 and be at least 175cm (5′8) tall.
• Hiroki Kuroda is playing catch again after his horrific accident. He joked, “I’m glad I didn’t forget how to throw”, though he is still experiencing headaches.

English

• If you haven’t seen the Goro Shigeno Koko Yakyu blog, you should check it out — its easily the best way to follow the Koshien tournament in English.
• Bloomberg ran a story on Yusei Kikuchi.
• Tsuyoshi Wada is looking to return to SoftBank some time in September.
• Brandon Siefken breaks down some of the hardest working starters in Japan.
• This isn’t baseball related but it illustrates the differences between Japanese and English as well as the challenges of machine translation.

Looks like Hideki Irabu is planning on hanging around beyond this season. According to Sponichi, the big righty is looking to continue his comeback in Japan and could join an independent league team as soon as September, after his Golden League season is over.

Irabu has put up a seemingly respectable 3.87 era in eight Golden League starts, and shown a fastball that has reportedly reached about 93mph with a hard forkball. Word is that his right knee, which caused him to retire in the first place, also isn’t bothering him.

Irabu’s agent, Don Nomura, has reached out to NPB teams including Irabu’s former teams Lotte and Hanshin, and Nomura’s stepfather’s Rakuten. An anonymous representive from an un-named team was quoted as saying “he wasn’t a match for the points we need to improve, but I felt his drive”. NPB has a player acquisition deadline of July 31, which essentially closes the door on him playing with an NPB club this season.

It’s interesting to see Nomura in the news again. Nomura has faded out of the spotlight in recent years, but he was once a Scott Boras-like figure who played a central role in bringing Irabu, Hideo Nomo, and Alfonso Soriano to MLB.

It’s now been a year since my first post on NPB Tracker.

It’s been a fun year of blogging, it’s gone by quickly. I’ve been able to reach far more people with the site than I expected, and the response I’ve gotten has been overwhelming positive. NPB Tracker is a tiny pixel on 200-inch HDTV that is blogosphere, but considering the nichieness of the content, I’m happy with the audience the site has built. I hope to continue to produce content that people will enjoy.

The positive reaction I’ve gotten to the site has motivated me to write more. When I started this site, I anticipated posting three to five times a week, but looking back now we’ve published over 400 articles. I say “we” because Ryo has contributed a couple dozen posts – Thanks Ryo!

Another unexpected outcome of this blog is that I’ve gotten to see my work and occasionally my name in some more mainstream media outlets. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Both Rob Neyer and Will Carroll picked up my news about Ichiro pitching earlier in the year. I’ve enjoyed reading both Rob and Will for years so it was very exciting having them link to NPB Tracker.
• The baseball blogger at the Washington Post mentioned my work a number of times, including this blurb about Junichi Tazawa.
• The Boston Score asked me some questions last autumn, also on Tazawa.
• My busted translation of a Nikkan Sports piece on Hideki Irabu’s comeback got picked up by NBC New York. This was one of the best because the writer gave EWC a nod as well.
• Links to NPB Tracker have started showing up on Wikipedia.

I think my overall favorite was my interview with Ted Berg of sny.tv. An inaccurate article that Ted wrote back in 2007 was part of my motivation for starting the site, and I shared the story in a thread on EWC, which Ted then found and contacted me after reading. Getting to take part in that interview was like coming full circle in a way.

I hope this doesn’t come across as self promoting; the attention this site has gotten has definitely exceeded my expectations and it’s a great honor to have been acknowledged by this group of people.

So, what does the next year hold for NPB Tracker? Mostly more of the same. The majority of the content will still be about Japanese baseball, and it will mostly be in English. I’m planning to have some content on baseball in other countries as well. Outside of that, I’m hoping to find some time to add some additional functionality to the site, mostly with the goal of making it more interactive (suggestions are always welcome).

So thanks for reading everyone, the pleasure has been all on this side of the ‘net.

Hideki Irabu won his first appearance for the Long Beach Armada, striking out six in six innings.

Reports out of Japan put his hardest fastball at 92 mph, and Sanspo has plenty of pictures if you’re interested.

The Long Beach Armada of the independent Golden League formally introduced Hideki Irabu on May 18. Sanspo quoted Irabu as saying, “I want to feel the joy of standing on the mound and have fun out there. I’m excited”. Sanspo also has a couple of photos of Irabu in his jersey and at the press conference. That’s Long Beach manager Gary Templeton on Irabu’s left in the second picture, and a guy who kind of looks like actor Ray Liotta on his right. Irabu is scheduled to make his first game appearance on June 5.

Last month, Long Beach’s Golden League rival Calgary Vipers announced the signing of Mac Suzuki as well (thanks to reader Dave G for the tip), so we’ll have two of the Japanese MLB pioneers in the same indy league this year. Ironically, along with Hideo Nomo, Irabu and Suzuki hold an ownership stake in the independent Elmira Pioneers, who currently participate in the New York State Collegiate League. So we have a couple of guys who own a team in one league playing in another.

Sanspo and others have the scoop — Hideki Irabu has signed a deal with the Long Beach Armada of the independant Golden League. There’s an official announcement reportedly coming on the 27th.

Irabu is still a name, particularly on this side of the Pacific, and I think he’ll sell a few tickets for the Armada. We’ll see if he has enough left in his right arm to help them on the field.

Hat tip to the unintentionally prophetic EWC: Nikkan Sports is reporting noted fat toad Hideki Irabu is working out in LA and aiming to resume his career in the US independent leagues some time this season. The article says that he’s played in amateur games and is hitting 90 mph on the gun in his workouts. There’s also a lengthy quote from someone associated with Irabu:

That he’s aiming for a comeback is true. Because he’s gotten back into shape*, he came to want play again. He’s playing with a cheerful demeanor. He wants to get tryouts and find a club he can play for. He’s looking to make a comeback in the independent leagues during the season. Looking to the future, the thinking is that if possible he wants to return to a high level, like MLB or NPB. 

*the original Japanese translates more directly as “his condition has returned”, which I think is really more of an assertion that Irabu has recovered from the injuries that forced him to retire. Keep in mind that this is a guy who was known as “jellyfish” in Japan before he was ever called a toad. The jellyfish moniker was an affectionate one though.

I wonder if that’s Don Nomura talking. 

Nikkan Sports provides us with a picture of him throwing, but I think that it was taken before the WBC, when Kyuji Fujikawa was working out in LA and happened to bump into Irabu in Compton. That sounds too ridiculous to be true, but it’s what was reported. Irabu is a US green card holder and returned to the US earlier in the year. Putting two and two together, I’d say he’s looking for a spot in the Golden League.

By now this is old news, but this is one of those posts that I started drafting, got interrupted, and haven’t had the time to get back to until now. Better late than never.

So, to get caught up, “the Tazawa penalty” is a new rule banning Japanese players who have opted out of the NPB draft to sign internationally from joining an NPB team for up to three years after leaving their international organization. The idea is make top Japanese amateurs think twice about bypassing NPB for MLB by eliminating the assumption that they have an easy path back.

Though I haven’t found anything concrete on this, I’m guessing the rule will be in effect from Tazawa forward, so Robert Boothe shouldn’t have anything to worry about if he wants to pitch in Japan in the future.

Tazawa has commented on the situation: “Personally I only thought about going to America. I wasn’t thinking about the next person, so this is something I have to apologize for”.

My gut feeling is that this is kind of a sour grapes move by the NPB establishment and they’ll get over it. There is some historic precedence to suggest that they will: the cases of Hideki Irabu, Kazuhito Tadano, Hideo Nomo and Mac Suzuki.

Irabu is perhaps the most informative example. Prior to being a bust with the Yankees, Irabu was under contract with the San Diego Padres, whom he refused to play for. At the time, the NPB establishment felt that they had been embarrassed by Irabu’s antics and said that he wouldn’t be allowed back in, but Hanshin signed him for the 2003 season. He won the fans over with a strong start.

Kazuhito Tadano was a top college pitcher who went undrafted because of his appearance in an adult film. The story was that NPB teams were worried about their images, but a couple of years and MLB appearances later, the Nippon Ham Fighters had gotten over it and selected Tadano in the second round of the NPB draft.

There was severe backlash against Hideo Nomo after he pulled his retirement stunt to make it to MLB, but it didn’t take too long for him to turn that around and he’s now widely recognized as one of most significant figures in Japanese baseball over the last 20 or so years, along wth Ichiro. I’m not aware of similar backlash against Mac Suzuki, but when he decided he was ready to move to NPB at least two teams (Yakult and Orix) were interested in drafting him, and Orix did draft and sign him.

So my gut feeling, and my hope, is that this new rule basically amounts to an idle threat. Instead of threatening Japanese nationals like this, I’m hoping to see a little more effort to make signing and playing in NPB more appealing, and at the same time, investing a more in developing young talent, particularly young international talent.