The 2009 season is in the books, and the MVPs go to Yu Darvish in the Pacific League, with Alex Ramirez receiving the honor for the Central League. Darvish earns the award for the second time in his career and Ramirez obtains the award for the second straight season.
The Rookie of the Year award is received by Tokyo Yomiuri Giants outfielder Testuya Matsumoto, the first time in 51 years that two players from the same team received the RoY in consecutive years (Giants reliever Tetsuya Yamaguchi took the prize last year). The Pacific League award goes to reliever Tadashi Settsu of the Softbank Hawks.
The Best Nine Awards have also been announced and the winners are as follows:
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.
The ceremonial first pitch for the first game between the Yomiuri Giants and Hanshin Tigers was thrown from a great distance. Koichi Wakata, an astronaut on a long-term mission at the International Space Station, filmed the first pitch wearing a Giants uniform (supplied by manager Tatsunori Hara) inside the station, and was shown on the scoreboard prior to the game at the Tokyo Dome.
The ball used for the ceremonial first pitch was a speciality made ball, the “School Lunch Ball.” Inside the ball was a message-filled ribbon signed by Giants captain Shinnosuke Abe and nine students selected from the School Lunch program that the Giants participate in. The “School Lunch” program involves players interacting with students and eating lunch together in school classrooms.
Wakata commented, “If I practice more, maybe I will be able to throw a pitch that is impossible to imitate in Earth. I will hope to continue reporting news of dreams and hope from space.”
A new gyro ball in the works, perhaps from outer space. Stay tuned.
And the silly season begins! Yomiuri Giants catcher Shinnosuke Abe has met the service time requirements for domestic free agency. MLB fans, don’t get too excited — Abe can only move to other NPB teams. The Giants have a policy of not negotiating with players who have declared free agency, so we’ll see what happens with him. My guess is that he doesn’t go anywhere.
It took a while to find a way to actually watch the game here in the States, but I finally did.
About the game…
Jung Bong shut Japan down again, indicating that his round one performance was no fluke.
Yu Darvish was better than the final line makes him look. He was done in in the first (from what I saw of the highlights) by a couple of a couple of booted infield grounders and a weak throw from Norichika Aoki.
After the first inning, Korea didn’t do much of anything until the eighth, when they let Japan’s pitchers beat themselves with walks.
Japan got runners on base and generally made contact, but they didn’t get any extra-base hits and didn’t really play the small-ball game. I think that’s what cost them the win more than anything.
Akinori Iwamura looked like he had no chance against Chang Yang Lim in the last at-bat of the game.
I wasn’t crazy about Korea planting their flag on the mound at the end. They didn’t win the tournament.
Hindsight is 20/20…
Tatsunori Hara had the infield positioned for a play at the plate when Korea had the bases loaded in the first. If they had been a double-play depth they would have gotten at least one out on Jin-young Lee’s grounder went for a two-run single.
I would rather start Munenori Kawasaki than Yasuyuki Kataoka if Hiroyuki Nakajima can’t play, especially since Kataoka is out of position at shortstop.
What was the point of putting Yoshiyuki Ishihara in for Kenji Johjima, just to pinch hit for him with Shinnosuke Abe after an inning? Johjima got ejected — shame on me for watching with the sound off.
Minoru Iwata didn’t look sharp — and leaving him in to face the righty looked really bad when Masahiro Tanaka came in and blew the next guy away.
On the live chat…
The chat thing was a spur-of-the-moment idea, so I didn’t give much notice. If I try this again, I’ll give more notice and hopefully I’ll get to chat with a few of the regulars.
The chat was pretty well-trafficed, mostly because it wound up near the top of the Google rankings for several variations on “wbc japan korea live”. A lot of people found this site for the first time because of that, and I hope some of them will stick around.
It took some time to find a good video feed, but I think at least a couple people were able to follow along.
Some of the comments I got on the chat tested my patience — though the people causing the problems clearly weren’t frequent visitors to this site. I hope everyone will be cool next time we do this.
I think it was insane for ESPN to show the NIT tournament instead of this.
Notable departures are Nobuhiko Matsunaka (achilles problem), Kenta Kurihara (affected by elbow surgery last year), Toru Hosokawa (right shoulder pain), Tsuyoshi Wada, and Takayuki Kishi. Health reasons were not cited for Wada and Kishi.
Overall, the roster looks pretty good to me, though it’s somewhat short on power.The inclusion of Yoshiyuki Kamei makes no obvious sense to me, but I could see him as a defensive replacement/pinch runner. The only other questionable pick I see is Shunsuke Watanabe. He’s been hit or miss in NPB, and as I recall he wasn’t that great in the 2006 WBC.