The 2009 Golden Glove Winners have been announced, and Nippon Ham dominated the Pacific League with seven players receiving the award. Tetsuya Matsumoto of the Giants became the first former ikusei player to win a Golden Glove.
It’s that time of the year again when each team starts to look forward to the offseason stove league, aside from the Giants and Fighters who are set to do battle for this year’s big prize. The main talks of the off-season will be centering around the movement of the free agents and today the list of qualifying players was released.
Potential candidates that might consider a move overseas are starting to buzz around the rumor mill and Ryota Igarashi and Naoyuki Shimizu are two of the bigger names in the news at this point. Toshihisa Nishi is another guy who wants to play in MLB, but he’s 38 and looking at MLB as a swansong. The situation might change once the offseason begins, but there have been no talks about big names being posted and it might be a relatively quiet offseason for new Japanese players coming to the States for a new challenge.
As previously reported in Japanese, Kenji Johjima has decided to opt out of the final two years of his contract with the Seattle Mariners. Johjima was the first Japanese catcher in the big leagues, playing in total of 462 games in the span of four seasons.
His NPB power bat did not translate well for him in the big leagues and it became a struggle to earn regular playing time last season with the Mariners, as he appeared in only 71 games. A pair of injuries limited his playing time as well.
Earlier this week, there was speculation that an opt out move was in the works, citing Johjima’s cancelled off-season Mariners PR work. Johjima is known to be quoted in saying, “I do not feel strongly to live and die in the majors for the rest of my career. I would like to take back to Japan what I learned from the States, and want to go back while I can still contribute to a team.”
There have been reports already that the Hanshin Tigers are interested and his former team, Softbank Hawks, should be another possibility. Johjima should still be one of the best catchers in Japan, once landing with a team and Japanese fans should be happy to get him back.
Now the question is when will we see another Japanese catcher be to challenge for an opportunity in the majors, and who will it be? Motonobu Tanishige and Ryoji Aikawa both failed to garner offers in their attempts to move over as free agents.