Ryo » 13 October 2009 » In npb » Comments Off on Regular Season Ends for NPB
The NPB regular season concluded in both leagues and the championship series will get under way Friday, October 16th JST. The Tokyo Yomiuri Giants, the winner of the Central League and the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters, the winner of the Pacific League will get a bye during the first round.
The Chunichi Dragons and the Tokyo Yakult Swallows will square off in the first round of the Central League Championship series, and the Rakuten Golden Eagles versus the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks will match up in the Pacific League.
With the regular season in the books, the awards for each batting and pitching categories have been determined (Central League and Pacific League winners listed respectively):
Another season of baseball in the books and now the fight for the Championship will begin. It was another exciting year of regular season baseball in Japan as the attendance rose five percent compared to the previous season and the Hanshin Tigers continued their winning ways at the gate, earning the top attendance record for five straight seasons.
Another Japanese only edition, this time focusing on US-Japan player movment:
It doesn’t look like Wei-Yin Chen is going anywhere any time soon, according to Chunichi Dragons president Junnosuke Nishikawa. “He can’t move unless he’s willing to break our agreement. We don’t have those conditions (to allow him out after the season) in our contract,” said Nishikawa. Commenting on a possible move to the majors, Nishikawa said, “even if that’s out there, that’s only if the team grants him to be posted.” Of course, there’s no indication that Chen even wants to leave, only that MLB scouts are watching him.
Hanshin is sending ni-gun reliever Ken Nishimura to the Arizona Fall League this year. He’ll join five or six other NPB prospects, including Norihito Kaneto of the Giants.
Yokohama has made Tom Mastny its first foreign dismissal of the season. Mastny went 1-5 with a 5.69 era in 15 games for Yokohama this year. “We gave him a chance and he didn’t produce results,” said the Yokohama front office. The BayStars are doing some general housecleaning and interim manager Tamio Tashiro, 28-year veteran Kimiyasu
Kudoh, and comparatively young infielder Toshihisa Nishi have all been shown the door.
Speaking of Nishi, he’s reportedly open to a move to the US minor leagues if the right offer in Japan doesn’t materialize. Nishi explored a move to the Majors after filing for free agency back in 2004, but obviously that didn’t work out. As I recall the Pirates were rumored to be interested back then.
Sports Hochi is reporting that a number of MLB scouts were on hand to take in Chunichi Dragons ace Wei-Yin Chen’slatest win, a two-hit shutout over Hanshin at Koshien. Among them was Steve Wilson, the Cubs’ Director of Asia Pacific scouting, who commented “of course we know Chen, but I can’t talk about specific players.” A scout from an unnamed AL East team said that if he were available, “about 15 teams would move on him.” Chen is in the midst of a dominating season (8-3, 1.45 era, 142.1 ip). I have every intention of doing a full profile of him, I can say that he features a fastball that reaches the mid-90’s and a sharp slider.
The new bit of information in this article is that Chen is on a single year contract, and thus eligible to change teams after the season. Chen, 24, signed out of Taiwan in 2004 after small bidding war between Chunichi, Daiei (now SoftBank) and MLB clubs. Since he’s a member of the NPB players’ union (most foreign players are not), I always thought he was under a standard NPB entry contract. If that’s not the case that he’ll certainly attract attention this season.
A pair of Asian-born NPB pitchers are getting some attention from MLB teams. Today I’ll take a look at South Korean relief ace Chang Yong Lim.
Lim is best known among international fans for giving up the eventual game-winning hit to Ichiro in this year’s WBC Final. By day, however, Lim is the closer for the Yakult Swallows, and he’s been lights-out this year. Through 29.2 innings, he has yet to allow an earned run for the surprising Swallows, who at 36-22 are 2nd in the Central League.
Lim is a fastball/sinker/slider pitcher who relies on a rather unsual combination of velocity and a side-arm delivery. He pitches off his fastball, which usually sits in the 90-93mph range, but will reach 96/97mph. There were reports earlier in the year that he hit the magical 160kmph (100mph) mark on the gun, but I don’t buy it. Other reports put that pitch at 155kmph (97mph), which is more believable and still very good. You can get a sense of his mechanics from these clips of his 17th and 18th saves from this season, or this clip of him striking out a couple of Chunichi Dragons last year.
What prompted me to write about Lim now was the recent revelation that he’s looking for a US-based agent, first published in Japanese tabloid Nikkan Gendai and repeated in the Japanese edition of the JoongAng Ilbo, where I found it. However, the soonest we’re likely to see him Stateside is 2011, as Yakult holds an option on his services for next year, which they’ve reportedly already decided to excercise. While it’s unclear how much the option year is worth, he’s been an absolute bargain for the Swallows so far. He earned just $300k last year, and is making $500k this season. By comparison, bullpenmate Ryota Igarashi is making about $840k this season.
Lim’s interest in playing internationally dates back to 2002. According ot his Japanese Wikipedia entry, his KBO club Samsung posted in him to MLB in 2002, but ultimately didn’t get a bid they were happy with. Lim again attempted a move abroad in 2004, negotiating with Rakuten in Japan and, reportedly, several MLB clubs before resigning with Samsung.
Next time I’ll take a look at Chunichi lefty Wei Yin Chen.
Staying: Hitoki Iwase, Byung-Gyu Lee, Maximo Nelson, Wei-Yin Chen, Tomas de la Rosa
Trending: downward
Synopsis: Chunichi lost three major contributors from it’s 2008 team, and so far hasn’t replaced any of them with a veteran signing. They still have a deep team, but will play 2009 without a veteran ace or middle-lineup slugger. Chunichi’s foreign additions for 2009 are of the discount bin variety, rather than established performers.
Patrick » 21 August 2008 » In npb » Comments Off on Olympic League Play Recap
Well, Japan squeaked into the medal round of the Olympics with a 4-3 record in group play. Japan is the 4th seed and draws top-ranked Korea in the opening game of the medal round.
Japan blew out Taiwan, the Netherlands and China, edged Canada, and lost to Cuba, Korea, and the United States. Japan beat the teams it needed to beat, and lost to the stronger competitors. The lose to Cuba was the only game that Japan didn’t have a chance to win, mostly due to Yu Darvish’s disappointing performance (5 earned runs, 12 baserunners in 4 IP).
The losses to Korea and the USA were closer — both games were tied until the late innings. Japan had Korea tied 2-2 going into the 9th, but Chunichi closer Hitoki Iwase gave up 3 runs in 1 1/3 IP to take the loss. Simon from jhockey does a much better job breaking down the game than I could possibly do here.
Japan and the US took a scoreless tie into the 11th, when the lottery tie-breaker rule kicked in. Japan left Iwase on the hill for a second inning and he gave up 4 runs. Japan responded with 2 in the bottom of the inning but that obviously wasn’t enough to win. I’ll have to admit that I didn’t see Iwase pitch in the Olympics, so I don’t know what kind of impression he’ll have made on the many scouts present.
I’m a little disappointed to see Japan and Korea play in the first game of the medal round. I don’t really want to see either of these teams go home without a medal, but one of them will (what was I thinking — the loser will have a shot at the bronze). A Japan-Korea gold medal game would have been phenomenal but that isn’t going to happen.
I’ll close out this post with some random Olympic-related notes and articles I’ve picked up over the last week. These links are all to Japanese articles:
Play continued after three outs in the sixth inning of the US game. The last batter for the US popped out to center, but the teams failed to change sides and pitcher Masahiro Tanaka threw the first pitch pitch to the next batter. Then Hoshino heard someone shout “change” from the audience and went out to complain to the umpire, who called the inning complete.
Hoshino got himself ejected in the ninth inning of the Cuba game for arguing balls and strikes on Tomoya Satozaki’s check swing, then picked up a $2000 fine for failing to leave the field.
Outfielder Atsunori Inaba credited his game-winning home run to being able to eat McDonald’s, which he called a “mood lifter”.
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