NPB Tracker

Occasionally life gets in the way of hobbies, and last week was one of those times for me. A hellish week at the office and a planned home move have placed writing NPB Tracker squarely on the back burner. It’s been a busy week in pro yakyu too — from Oh’s retirement, to Seibu clinching the Pacific League crown, to Hisashi Iwakuma winning his 20th — and I’m hoping to get caught up on it in a couple days.

A look at what’s ahead on NPB Tracker:

• Recent events
• Sawamura Race: Darvish vs Iwakuma
• Pacific League playoff match-ups

It’s official: Oh has announced that he’s stepping down at the end of the season. Unfortunately, Oh’s Hawks are 10 games under .500 with 9 remaining to play, so we won’t see an inspired run to the playoffs down the stretch.

Oh’s announcement doesn’t come as much of a surprise. As I mentioned in last night’s post, he’d suffered from stomach cancer in 2006. Although this is likely the end of his time in professional baseball in Japan, he left the door open for future involvement in Japan baseball during his press conference: “If there is a need in Japan baseball and I’m asked, I think I should cooperate”.

Sanspo has a photo retrospective looking at Oh’s 14-year career managing the Hawks.

Japanese baseball legend Sadaharu Oh is expected to announce his resignation as manager of the SoftBank Hawks following today’s game against Rakuten. I’ll have more details tomorrow morning (California time).

Oh has run the Hawks’ field operations for 14 years, an unusually long time for a manger in any league. Although his style is sometimes unorthodox, he made the Hawks perennial contenders and took Japan Series Championships in 1999 and 2003. After a prolonged slump, the Hawks uncharacteristically fallen to 5th place for the season.

Oh has battled health issues in recent years, most notably a bout with stomach cancer in 2006. Oh is widely considered to be the best player in Japanese baseball history, pounding 868 home runs in his distinguished career with the Yomiuri Giants.

JapaneseBaseball.com has released a new podcast for the week of Sept 9-14. Check out the text or audio.

By now it’s common knowledge among baseball fans that Junichi Tazawa has elected to forego a career in Nippon Pro Baseball and jump right in to an MLB organization. The Red Sox, Pirates, Braves, Mariners and Cubs have been publicly linked with Tazawa, with Boston considered the front runner to land him. Based on the hype he’s getting I’d expect him to get a contract in the first round draft pick range.

Tazawa’s announcement has predictably send a shock wave through Japanese baseball. Meetings are underway — so far the 12 NPB have met amongst themselves and with three amateur baseball bodies; and NPB commissioner Ryozo Kato is meeting with Bud Selig on September 16 in New York (correction 9/16: representatives from the two commissioners offices are meeting today, a meeting between the actual commissioners is on the cards for later). My impression is that the Japanese baseball institution is more intent on preventing this development from setting a precedent than it is blocking this individual player’s move to the US.

Much of the discussion seems to be around the uneven playing field between NPB and MLB teams in pursuit of Tazawa. Tazawa is subject to the NPB draft, while he’s eligible to sign as a free agent with MLB teams. This puts NPB at a considerable disadvantage: NPB teams can only offer draft picks a maximum bonus of about $1M, while MLB teams aren’t bound to a limit; NPB scouts are limited in when they can talk to amateur players while MLB scouts don’t have to comply to such limits. Like MLB, NPB has a draft system to try and fairly distribute talent among the teams. It would be a shame to see that effort undermined, and it seems worthwhile to revisit the rules for teams scouting players subject to the NPB draft.

It’s important to note that the news here is not necessarily the MLB interest, but that Tazawa has chosen to forgo the NPB draft. NPB and MLB have had an unwritten agreement in place since 1962 that prohibits MLB teams from signing Japanese NPB draft candidates, but that hasn’t stopped MLB teams from trying to sign top Japanese amateurs in the past. Tazawa is the first to accept the overtures. So while MLB teams have mostly honored the letter of the gentleman’s agreement, they haven’t entirely honored the spirit of it. It’s only now that a top talent has been lured away that the NPB institution is getting upset.

Another thing to consider is that each year MLB teams sign much of the top young amateur players out of Taiwan and Korea, and no one bats an eye. Why is that? MLB’s interest in the players from these countries is a validation of the talent that’s there, but I think it impedes the development of local leagues and deprives fans of seeing some of their countries’ top players compete in international competition. Japan has managed to retain its top talent and making them stars at home, which is one of the reasons NPB is a strong league.

Tim Dierkes included my comments that a Japanese team could go after a guy like Aaron Crow or Pedro Alvarez in his most recent post on the Tazawa situation. At this point it would be an obvious retaliation move but under the right circumstances it would make sense for both sides. The player would get a viable alternative to MLB — playing in Japan in front of tens of thousands of fans every night, for millions of dollars. The team would get a talented player that they could eventually send back to MLB via the posting system (Ramon Ramirez is a non-Japanese player who was developed and posted by the Hiroshima Carp).

Obviously there is a lot left to happen before the situation is resolved, but Tazawa has already gotten his name in the history books just by announcing his decision. This development might bring about change to bring NPB and MLB together, or it might drive them apart. I’m hoping for the former.

After a short break from writing, I’m back with a few highlights from my weekend reading. I’ve been enjoying Sanspo’s Baseball Photo Ranking lately.

The next big piece of content I have on tap for NPB Tracker is (surprise) an essay on the Junichi Tazawa situation. Look out for that in the next day or two.

Japanese Articles:

• Construction of the new Hiroshima Citizen’s Stadium is underway, and you can follow its progress on this blog. Thanks to Erik Schullstrom for the link.
• Nippon Ham Fighters starter Ryan Glynn has a 28-inning scoreless streak going.
• Who says Japanese players don’t play hard? Here’s a shot of Yakult’s Masakazu Fukukawa taking out Yomiuri’s Shigeyuki Furuki on a slide into second base.
• Yokohama’s teenage righthander Atori made his first career appearance and hit 94 mph on the gun.
• The Eneos Industrial League team will be travelling to Brazil to play a seven-game exhibition series with Brazil’s national team to commerate 100 years of Japanese immigration to Brazil. I think this is great, I’d love to see baseball expand more deeply into Brazil.
• Obligatory Junichi Tazawa item: here’s a blogger who couldn’t care less if Tazawa skips NPB. “A guy who wants to go to the Majors can go. That’s it.” Well said.
• Hanshin has won a number of games in walk-off fashion recently, here are some YouTube clips of the team’s win on Sept 11: Jeff Williams shuts down Yakult in the top of the ninth, K’ing Norichika Aoki for the final out, Shinjiro Hiyama and Ikuro Katsuragi start the comeback, Akihiro Yano ties the game, and Makoto Imaoka wins it.

English Articles:

• Wayne Graczyk gives us a little insight into what makes fireballing Giants closer Marc Kroon tick.

There’s been lots of news about Junichi Tazawa over the last day or two, but I could use a break for him so I’m going to write about other stuff. If you’re looking for info on Tazawa, check out the stuff I’ve posted over the last few days.

On to the bullet points…

English Articles:

• David Watkins of Tsubamegun takes an in-depth look at the Yakult Swallows lineup changes this year.
• Chris Resop started his first game for the Hanshin Tigers, going 5 innings and giving up 2 runs. He didn’t figure in the decision.
• Resop’s old boss, Frank Wren, just got back from a trip to Japan.
• Deanna has photos from yet another Lotte farm team game, including shots of heralded rookie Yuuki Karakawa.
• Apparently Hideki Okajima isn’t that crazy about life in America.
• Michael Westbay of JapaneseBaseball.com has started up a podcast called Pro Yakyu this Week.

Japanese Articles:

• The SoftBank Hawks played with the Yahoo Dome’s retractable roof open for the first time in nine years on Sept 11. Hari-kaasan has more pics.
• Video highlights of Yu Darvish’s most recent win have been posted to YouTube. Darvish struck out 13 over 8 innings.
• Hanshin beat Yakult on Sept 10 with a walk-off walk.
• Tuffy Rhodes and Alex Cabrera both homered in the surging Buffaloes 6-1 win over Lotte. Orix is now just 4 games behind Seibu for 1st place in the Pacific League. Vote Daijiro Ohishi for Manager of the Year in ’08.

Michael Westbay of JapaneseBaseball.com fame has started up a weekly Pro Yakyu podcast. This posting has a transcript of the first podcast, and here’s a link to download the mp3 content.

Well, Eneos has won the Industrial League’s Tokyo Intercity Championship, mostly behind the standout pitching of ace Junichi Tazawa. Tazawa dominated his competition and was presented with the Hashido Award as the tournament’s top player. According to reports, he only hit about 91 mph on the gun in the final game, which is almost certainly attributable to his high workload during the tournament.

With the tournament over, Tazawa is now free to think about his future. He’s scheduled a press conference for September 11 where he’s expected to announce his intent to sign with an MLB team. Sponichi quoted Tazawa as saying “It (the tournament) has just ended… I’ll think it over from now” and “I want to test my strength overseas”.

Needless to say, there’s been an explosion of coverage on this in the Japanese press. Several MLB teams have reportedly sent scouts to watch Tazawa, while the Braves have sent GM Frank Wren and the Tigers have sent Dick Egan, special assistant to GM Dave Dombrowski. The consensus favorite to land Tazawa still seems to be the Red Sox, but we’ll see what happens.

Don’t touch that dial…

Going with all Japanese articles for today’s bullet points, since I haven’t really read anything in English for the last couple of days.

Japanese Articles:

• A Japanese blogger has set up a site to protest Senichi Hoshino’s prospective involvement in next year’s World Baseball Classic. The movement seems to be spreading, as banners like this and this are beginning to appear elsewhere in the Japanese blogoshpere. Update: The campaign won’t have to continue on very long as Hoshino has already said he won’t accept the job if it’s offered.
• The Hiroshima Carp will be be wearing throwback uniforms from the team’s late 70’s/early 80’s golden age. Carp Blog has a pic and good graphics in general.
• Chunichi Dragons blog Negative Dragons reported that 2nd baseman Masahiro Araki will not excercise his right to become a free agent and stay in Nagoya. Sponichi reported the same news the following day. I’ve updated the 2009 NPB free agent list.
• At the risk of stoking the flames: scouts from six major league teams including the Yankees watched Yu Darvish shut down the Lions on Sept 9 (English Box Score courtesy of JapaneseBaseball.com). I guess this is what Gene Michael was doing in Japan. Sanspo re-iterated that “Darvish has not expressed any intent of going to MLB and is affectionate toward his team, but MLB teams won’t leave him alone“.
• Chunichi pitcher Hitoki Iwase become the first NPB closer to record four consecutive 30+ save seasons.

Question for bullet points readers: do you enjoy the Japanese content or the English content more? What topics do you find most interesting?