NPB Tracker

Japan cleanup hitter Shuichi Murata is out of the WBC with a pulled a hamstring, suffered rounding first on a single in Thursday night’s win over Korea. Despite replacing him in the game with scrub Yoshiyuaki Kamei, Japan won the game. Manager Tatsunori Hara has called on Hiroshima Carp infielder Kenta Kurihara to take Murata’s spot. Kurihara bats cleanup for Hiroshima but doesn’t have Murata’s power and hasn’t played much at third recently. 

Maybe Hara will have Kurihara DH and play Munenori Kawasaki or Yasuyuki Kataoka at third.

Update, March 22, 11:39am: And to close the loop, the Giants did indeed re-sign Yabu to a minor league deal. 

Update, March 20 10:18pm: Nikkan Sports adds that Giants released Yabu to get him off the 40-man roster, and there is a chance they’ll re-sign him to a minor league contract.

According to Nikkan Sports, the Giants have released veteran righty Keiichi Yabu. Yabu came off the scrap heap last year to put up solid number by the Bay, but had given up 7 runs in 2 2/3 innings in the Giants’ camp this spring. He had already been optioned to AAA on March 5th.

Japan and Korea square off for the fourth time in this year’s WBC, with Korea holding the edge 2-1. Tetsuya Utsumi gets the start for Japan, while Jang Wonsam gets the call for Korea. This game determines the seedings for the semifinal round, but both teams are guaranteed to move on.

US-based fans can see the game on ESPN; Japan and Korea-based fans can certainly watch the game locally, we’ll see if we can find a live feed for others.

The live chat will be moderated and trolls will not be tolerated.

Update: For the March 19 game, please click here.

Update: Very touch ‘n go schedule for me tonight. We’ll start now 8:00pm, but I’ll be interrupted.

We’ll do another live chat for tonight’s WBC game. Should be a good one — another rematch of the 2006 final, only this time the loser goes home. Hisashi Iwakuma takes the hill for Japan, while Yuneski Maya goes for Cuba. Tonight’s game will be on ESPN2 in my area, so I don’t anticipate messing around with justin.tv tonight.

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.

This will start at 9:00pm

I’m going to try to do a live chat for tonight’s WBC game. I’ll probably come and go during the game but I’ll be around. If this works out we’ll do it again some time.

ESPN isn’t showing this game live (stupid NIT tournament!), so I’ll have to find it on justin.tv.

This feed seems to be working.

The Orioles’ fan community has shown some interest in Ryohei Tanaka, so I thought I’d share this video of his workout in January that I stumbled across. Looks like he has a shuuto.

Since starting this blog, the one question I’ve heard more than any other is the one in the subject of this entry.

And now I finally have answer.

Today. Tuesday, March 17. St. Patrick’s Day.

Darvish will go for Japan, Jung Keun Bong will pitch for korea. You might remember Bong from his time with the Braves and Reds, when he was known as Jung Bong. Bong never stuck in the bigs, but posted a 2.66 era in 186 1/3 for the LG Twins of the KBO last year. He shut Japan down over 5 1/3 innings in Pool A championship game. 

Game time is 8:00pm Pacific Standard Time. Should be a good one!

This blog post generated a little traffic for NPB Tracker a couple of weeks ago. The gist of it was that Kei Igawa wasn’t wanted for the Japanese WBC team. This is true, he was never considered for inclusion. And it begs the question — can Igawa be moved? Either within MLB or back to NPB?

First let’s scratch a move back to NPB off the list of possibilities, at least for now. It was reported that the Yanks looked for a way to return Igawa after the 2007 season, but couldn’t make it work and gave up. Igawa fueled speculation in the Japanese media of an NPB return again last offseason, when went to visit the offices of the Hanshin Tigers, his old NPB team. Nothing came of that either, and Igawa wrote it off as just a visit. Later in the offseason, the former chair of the Tigers’ Old Boys club blasted him publicly, but I’m not sure if that’s entirely reflective of Hanshin’s management’s view of Igawa.

Hanshin still holds Igawa’s NPB rights, and the only way he could go to another NPB team would be if they choose to release him or trade his rights away. Kazuhisa Ishii is so far the only player to return to his former team after being posted.

Give Hanshin credit for posting Igawa when they did — they rode Daisuke Matsuzaka’s coattails to a $26m windfall for the team, without seriously harming their long term competitiveness.

So what about a move to another MLB team? Igawa was placed on waivers when he was removed from the Yanks’ 40-man roster was unprotected in the rule 5 draft last off season, but didn’t attract any takers. There were rumblings that Detroit was interested, and Yankees were trying to move him to the Brewers for Mike Cameron, but obviously nothing happened.

Igawa is openly showcasing himself for other teams this spring, and he’s doing a pretty good job at it. He’s survived the first cut of the spring and pitched 9 scoreless innings in 5 appearances so far. He also put up respectable numbers in AAA last year, but in this economy his contract will be an issue. Igawa is owed $4m/year for the next three seasons, so if the Yanks want him gone they’ll have to take some money back. The Giants seem like a fit if they can match up with the Yankees on a contract.

But perhaps the biggest stumbling block is Igawa’s reputation — no one seems to think he can survive at the MLB level. In an interview offseason, he said, with a laugh, “it seemed like there was a team that saw my (AAA) numbers and tried to acquire me. Then I was told ‘we found out the name, and it was you!'”. Igawa is going to have to prove he can be an MLB pitcher, and it’s going to take more than 8 good spring training innings to do that. It’ll probably take a combination of a lights-out spring plus some injury problems for him to get a look somewhere, but his spring performance is certainly a start.

Former Seibu Lion, Yokohama BayStar and Yomiuri Giant Tatsuya Ozeki failed in his audition with the Rockies. The outfielder made the announcement in an entry on his blog, saying he had hoped to become a player who could succeed in America despite being passed over in Japan. He’s back in Japan now. I’ll guess he’ll be looking for something new to do. For those who are interested in following he is frequently updating his blog.