NPB Tracker

As Ryo posted on Twitter yesterday, the Red Sox have called Junichi Tazawa up to the MLB team. He promptly took the loss in Boston’s 15-inning defeat to the Yankees, giving up a walk-off homer to Alex Rodriguez.

Boston used three Japanese pitchers in the game — Tazawa, Hideki Okajima and Takashi Saito; and another, Ramon Ramirez, who has NPB experience.

I’ve written about Tazawa extensively on this site, including this early scouting report-ish post, a deeper analysis of reasonable expectations for him, and an interview with Portland sports writer Kevin Thomas on his progress.

Correction, March 15: Marte had actually been with the Royals organization prior to signing with Hiroshima. Thanks to Erik Schullstrom for the info; I wasn’t able to find any information on Marte’s pre-Carp career either in Japanese or English. It is possible that he played under a different name. Either way, I better brush up on my Spanish.

I had been wondering what happened to pitcher Victor Marte after the Carp released him… he’s in camp with the Royals as a non-roster invitee. Looks like he got a minor league deal. 

Marte is a rarity, a Dominican who signed his first pro contract with an NPB team instead of an MLB team. Marte played in the Carp’s Dominican Academy before playing most in the Japanese minor leagues the last few years. Ramon Ramirez and Alfonso Soriano are a couple of Carp Academy alums currently playing in the Majors.

Interesting news out of Fukuoka — the SoftBank Hawks have sent team COO Takanori Takeuchi* and head coach Koji Moriwaki on a business trip to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. On the agenda is to watch a handful of Winter League games, and look into creating ties with a baseball academy in the Dominican. Sponichi quotes Takeuchi as saying, “even to if it’s just to stimulate our farm team, we’re considering bringing in Dominican players (as instructional players). If possible we’d like to affiliate with an independent academy “. He added jokingly, “we were given an extra bag to bring back foreign players.” Nishi Nippon adds another quote from Takeuchi: “there are academies that are not affiliated with the majors over there. Going forward we’d like to build cooperative relationships.”

If SoftBank does indeed set something up, it would be the third NPB academy in Latin America. The Hiroshima Carp have an academy in the Dominican, and the Yakult Swallows have one in Brazil. Both have graduated players to the NPB level, but the Carp’s Academy has been particularly successful in that it’s produced MLB players Alfonso Soriano, Timo Perez, Robinson Checo, and Ramon Ramirez. 

*Takeuchi has an eye for talent. He was in the US during the summer trying to convince the Rangers to sell Nelson Cruz’s contract to SoftBank.