Nelson was arrested for violating Japan’s weapons control law a couple of days ago when passing through security for a domestic flight. It turns out that he had a single bullet in his carry-on luggage. Nelson explained what happened at his apology press conference: “In the Dominican, I had put away about 50 bullets in that bag. When I was coming to Japan, I had planned on clearing out all the bullets and bringing that bag, but there was one left. I didn’t notice it.” I was wondering why that wouldn’t have triggered security already, but Nelson had an explanation for that: “at the time I came to Japan, I had that bag inside a suitcase I checked with the airline. Also when I traveled to Okinawa, it was with the luggage the team collected and delivered. So it didn’t get caught in the inspections.”

Nelson bowed deeply and seems to be apologetic. It seems like the team is conducting its own investigation, but it doesn’t look like this will cost Nelson his spot with the Dragons. In Sports Hochi article, manager Hiromitsu Ochiai was quoted as saying “this experience was awful, but from this point on do your best.”

On with the rest of the bullet points…

• Yusei Kikuchi, now known simply as Yusei, has been sent to Seibu’s ni-gun (farm team) camp.
• Yu Darvish’s wife, entertainer Saeko, gave birth to the couple’s second child, a boy weighing in at about 3400 grams. Darvish wasn’t present for the delivery, as he was tied up showing Buddy Carlyle how he grips his slider…
• According to the Yuma Sun by way of Nikkan Sports, Eri Yoshida was drafted out of the Arizona Winter League by the Golden League’s Chico Outlaws. Yoshida has a deal to play this season with Mie of the Japan Future Baseball League, and is going to talk her options over with her parents.
• A great nugget from the previously referenced Yoshida article is that Ila Borders, who played Indy ball in the late 90’s had and failed a tryout with the Kintetsu Buffaloes in 2000. I had never heard that before.
• College pitcher Yuki Saito, in the States training with his Waseda University team, was given the opportunity to throw off the mound at Dodgers Stadium. Nikkan Sports also picked up on the attention Saito is getting from SF Giants scouts John Cox and Shun Kakazu. That is the same Shun Kakazu that worked with Bobby Valentine’s Chiba Lotte Marines.
• Giants rookie Hisayoshi Chono, who I’m skeptical of, is off to a great start this spring, going 14/32 over his first eight games.
• This isn’t normal NPB Tracker news, but a couple weeks ago Taiwan’s Brother Elephants signed Canadian Ryan Murphy. To me, this is notable because Murphy spent the last two years in Holland’s Honkbal Hoofdklasse, and has experience in Australia as well.

Player Personnel

• Nippon Ham signed Bob Keppel and Brian Wolfe
• Yomiuri picked up Edgar Gonzalez, the former Padres infielder (Adrian’s brother)
• Rakuten signed Andy Phillips, whose option was not excercised by the Carp
• Yakult signed Diamondbacks AAA arm Tony Barnette
• Seibu signed NPB veteran reliever Brian Sikorski and AAA veteran Dee Brown
• Oakland signed NPB Tracker favorite Lenny DiNardo. I’m glad he’s back in the Bay Area and hope to see him with the A’s this year
• Another personal favorite, Shingo Takatsu, signed with the Sinon Bulls in Taiwan. Takatsu wants to be the first pitcher to record a save in NPB, MLB, KBO, and Taiwan’s CBL
• Colby Lewis signed with the Rangers
• Dan Johnson returned to the Rays
• SoftBank and Hiroshima will continue to look for pitching through spring training

Did I miss anyone?

Other News

• MLB and NPB are discussing holding a global world series between the champions from the two leagues. It doesn’t seem as close as initially reported, but I would love to see this happen. More later…
• Having failed to get any NPB offers, former Orix Buffaloe Katsuaki Furuki is moving into the ring and becoming a figher
• Yusei Kikuchi has begun working out for his first pro spring training. And believer or not, he’s walking on air
• More jibba-jabba about Yu Darvish going to MLB
• Matt Murton will play center field for Hanshin

Any other big stories over the last few weeks that I didn’t include?

10. Koji Uehara, Kenshin Kawakami sign with MLB teams; Yomiuri, Chunichi don’t notice. Uehara and Kawakami both signed with MLB clubs early in 2009, meanwhile, their former teams finished 1-2 in the Central League, with Yomiuri taking the Japan Series Championship.

9. Tuffy Rhodes hits 450th NPB home run. Tuffy continued his remarkable comeback in 2009, reaching 450 homers early in the season. A healthy 2010 will see him reach 500.

8. Rakuten makes first ever post season appearance as Katsuya Nomura retires. Rakuten to reached the second round of the playoffs in their fifth year of existence and appears to have a bright near-term future. Nomura restored his legacy with Rakuten after arguably failing to revive Hanshin and his wife’s ugly tax fraud problems.

7. Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium opens. Japan’s first new stadium in years opens to rave reviews, and while the Carp look competitive at times, they ultimately slump to a fifth-place finish.

6. Yusei Kikuchi stays in Japan; gets selected by only six teams in draft. After a lengthy cross-Pacific courting process, Kikuchi gave into social pressures and choose to stay in Japan and enter the NPB draft. After speculation that he could get picked by 10 or 11 teams,he winds up getting taken by six, with the remaining six teams grabbing other players uncontested. He eventually signs a max contract with Seibu.

5. Hideki Matsui wins World Series MVP. Matsui leaves NY in style with a dominant World Series performance, despite not starting any of the games played in Philadelphia.

4. Bobby Valentine leaves Marines. Bobby V goes back to Connecticut after a successful six-year run with Chiba Lotte, in which he turned around a moribund franchise and became one of the finest advocates for Japanese baseball in the West.

3. Yomiuri wins first title since 2002. It took seven years for Yomiuri to win a Japan Series post-Matsui. The Giants won three times in his ten-year Giants career (1994, 2000, 2002).

2. Ichiro collects 200 hits for ninth straight year. ’nuff said.

1. Japan wins second straight WBC title. Japan is now 2-2 in WBC appearances, avenging its embarrassing 2008 Olypmic loss.

Honorable mentions: Junichi Tazawa reaches MLB in first pro season; great Koshien finale; Yu Darvish/Alex Ramirez win MVPs; Hanshin re-imports Kenji Johjima

November 20 marked the 75th anniversary of Sawamura’s famous one-hit loss to the touring team of American all-stars. Sawamura, then 17, struck out Hall of Famers Lou Gerhig, Babe Ruth and  Jimmie Foxx, but surrendered a solo home run in the 7th to Gerhig, which was all the Americans needed to win 1-0.

The Americans responded to the loss by trying to sign Sawamura. There are various retellings, but the story goes that a Pirates scout asked Sawamura to “autograph” a contract. Connie Mack also tried to acquire him for the A’s, perhaps in a more above the board way. Sawamura refused and eventually went pro in Japan, but died in World War II. the Sawamura Award was established by NPB in 1947 (pre-dating the Cy Young Award).

The word “sempai” (先輩) roughly translates to “one who came before” or “senior”, like an older kid at school, or Nomo to Matsuzaka. Prepend it with a “dai” (大), meaning “big”, and you get “daisempai” (大先輩), as in someone who went to the school school, but graduated long before you even started. In a sense, Sawamura was the earliest predecessor to all the players I mentioned in the first paragraph.

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:

• Game Appearances… 25 or above
• Complete Games… 10 or above
• Wins… 15 or above
• Winning Percentage… .600 or above
• Innings Pitched… 200 or above
• Strikeouts… 150 or above
• ERA… Under 2.50

Obviously the only pitcher surpassing each of the criteria is Wakui with 11 complete games which made him the only true candidate for the award. An unwritten criterion necessary to win the Sawamura Award is strength and the ability to stay healthy. Even though Yu Darvish started out the season with a stellar performance, his injury in the second-half cost him his chance to win his second Sawamura Award.

The Best Nine Awards are still up still unannounced, and there are a lot of worthy candidates for the top pitcher in both the Central and Pacific Leagues. Who is most deserving of the award?

This is a very high quality video — the best I’ve seen on YouTube.

Now let’s take a look at some footage from earlier in the season, when he was healthy. The following are clips from Darvish’s July 15 start against the Hawks. I chose the July 15 game completely arbitrarily; I would have rather looked at footage from a more recent start but was unable to quickly locate any on YouTube.

As you can see, Darvish was a lot quicker to the plate in the July 15 game, and was landing harder on his front foot. Darvish also didn’t have that pause a the top of his windup, but he did use it later in the season.

Even without the pause, Darvish looked a lot more deliberate to the plate in game two, had a step back with his left foot, and was softer on his follow through than before. It looked to me like he was twisting his torso a bit more in game two as well.

It speaks to Darvish’s talent that he could come back after almost two months out, with altered mechanics, and shut down Japan’s top lineup.

Although he was clearly not 100 percent, he mixed in his off-speed pitches and went six innings, allowing two earned runs on seven hits with seven strikeouts for a total of 87 pitches. His opponent in Tetsuya Utsumi was not as sharp,  giving the Fighters a decent chance to win.

Even though Darvish had an extreme amount of time to practice, it was his first in-game situation since September, and the biggest stage of the year. Darvish showed why he is considered one of the best pitchers in the game, showing he can control a game without being 100 percent. He explained in an interview that he tried not to put too much strength toward his left foot and expanded his footing grip. His adjustment was to not to use his injured hip, and focus on using his arm to throw the ball.

Darvish quoted that he will be preparing to throw in Game 7 if necessary and that should be an exciting game if it happens.

So on to the scattered thoughts and observations…

• If you would have told me at the beginning of the year that Gonzales would start game one of the Japan Series, I would have laughed pretty hard.
• Deanna and Gen went to their usual levels of detail in covering game one.
• Yu Darvish has been out of commission for quite a while now, but he it looks like he’s starting game two for Nippon Ham. Tetsuya Utsumi gets the call for the Giants.
• Speaking of Darvish, he’s been throwing lefthanded again.
• I know a game has already been played so it’s too late to say this, but I like Yomiuri’s roster over Nippon Ham’s. I like Yomiuri’s depth in this series.
• On the other hand, the last time Nippon Ham won the Japan Series (2006), Darvish was partnered at the front of the Figthers’ rotation by Tomoya Yagi, who won the Rookie of the Year award that season. After winning in ‘06, Yagi promptly faded into injured-list oblivion, and Darvish became the best pitcher in Japan. This year, Yagi made a comeback, posting a 2.88 ERA in 122 innings, and Ham is back in the Series.
• It’s interesting to see Nippon Ham playing Yomirui in the Series. Prior to Ham moving to Hokkaido, the Fighters shared the Tokyo Dome with the Giants, and seemed to be operating in Yomiuri’s shadow. It seemed like the Fighters used to frequently sign ex-Giants, but the only notable example I can think of is Hiromitsu Ochiai. Once the Fighters moved to Hokkaido and got out from under the Giants’ shadow, they got competitive.
• I missed a chance to post on this earlier, but I’ll do so now — when Nippon Ham eliminated Rakuten from the Climax Series, it marked the (latest) end to manager Katsuya Nomura’s career. I wouldn’t call myself a Nomura fan, but he is certainly a character, and as such I suppose this picture of him putting away his uniform for the last time is a little sad. After Nippon Ham’s win, both sides honored Nomura with the traditional celebratory douage (click the link if you don’t know what that is). This is, I think, an important distinction for Japanese baseball from American baseball. Nippon Ham won the game and the series, and it was very much their day, but the winning players and Nippon Ham fans still celebrated Nomura after the game.

I don’t think I’ll be up to watch the game tonight, so if anyone checks it out on justin.tv, please click the ‘watch later’ link, and paste the url into a comment.

Pedro Okuda: Okuda is a third-generation Japanese Brazilian who came to Japan to play baseball. He made a name for himself in the 2007 Koshien tournament with a walk-off home run, but still didn’t get picked in yesterday’s draft.

Maike Magario: Magario is another Brazilian, though one who has grown up for most of his life in Japan. I haven’t seen much of Magario, but his build reminds me a little bit of Shawn Green. Yakult took Magario with their first ikusei pick. Note that Yakult also took Brazilian Rafael Fernandez in the ikusei draft last year, and operates an academy in Brazil.

Juanyoni Allan: Yet another Brazilian, I know even less about Allan than the previous two players – I don’t even know if I have the Romanization of his name correct. Draft reports indicates that he’s a big kid (196 cm, 100km; 6′5, 220lbs) who came to Japan with the goal of becoming a pro ballplayer. The report also says that he’s a power hitter who has seen time on the mound, but struggled with his command. Allan was not selected in the draft.

John Clayton Unten: clearly the best prospect of this bunch, Clayton was born to an American father and Japanese mother and attended high school in Okinawa. Shukan Baseball compares him to Seibu starter Takayuki Kishi, which I take a real compliment. Nippon Ham has become known for acquiring half-Japanese players (Yu Darvish, Romash Tasuku Dass, previously Micheal Nakamura as well), and indeed the Fighters drafted Unten in the fourth round.

Deanna has a full breakdown of who went where that goes into far more detail than I’ll get to. You’ll see more from me on the draft, though.