NPB Tracker

According to multiple Japanese sources, over 20 scouts from more than 10 teams gathered to watch Japan’s exhibition game against the Cubs, with the center of attention obviously being Yu Darvish. Darvish didn’t disappoint, holding the Cubs scoreless in his two innings of work. Nikkan Sports adds that he hit 96mph on the gun, or about 155kmph. His fastest recorded pitch in NPB is 154kmph so he might have dialled it up a little bit for the Cubs. He also threw his two-seam fastball and slider, but no word on whether his curveball has made an appearance. 

I didn’t see any of this game. I actually get WGN on my cable system so I’m kicking myself for not knowing whether they aired it or not. Anyway, here are some quotes from people who were there as reported by Nikkan Sports:

Alfonso Soriano: “He’s a good pitcher. His breaking pitches in particular stand out. He’s a tough opponent. He could definitely play in the majors.”

Carlos Zambrano: “He has an aura on the mound. That’s important for a pitcher. He uses his off-speed pitches well, and really knows how to pitch.”

SF Giants Far East Scount John Cox: “We don’t know if he’ll come over via posting or as a free agent, but if he’s interested in the majors we’ll think about acquiring him.”

Daisuke Matsuzaka will reportedly start against Cuba in round two, so we can expect to see Darvish later in the tournament.

Time to get back into the swing of things and get back to writing here. I don’t think I’ll be able to post as often as I had been before, but hopefully I’ll get back to a decent pace. Let’s start with some thoughts on the WBC.

• No matter who wins the WBC, the story of the tournament will be the Netherlands’ upset of the Dominican Republic. I watched the end of the second game and it was electric baseball —  the kind of thing that makes the tournament worth watching. I saw the last couple of innings of the Netherlands-Puerto Rico game, and the Dutch side didn’t look that good at the plate. They couldn’t catch up with what looked like MLB-average fastballs up in the zone. But then again, they were coming off an emotional game against the Dominicans, and were playing in front of a very enthusiastic Puerto Rican home crowd. They’ll be the underdogs against Venezuela, but I’m expecting a good game.
• I stayed up late to watch some of the Asian pool games, specifically the ones involving Japan. Even I found Orestes Destrade’s Japan bias to be a little annoying. Anyway, the baseball was good. Yu Darvish mostly looked good against China, but I thought he nibbled a little too much and could have challenged the Chinese hitters with his excellent fastball a little more. He had complained about not being able to command his breaking pitches with the WBC ball, so we’ll see if that becomes an issue later on. 
• Japan’s lineup looks a lot better with Atsunori Inaba not batting fourth. I didn’t expect them to pound Korea 14-2, nor did I expect them to lose 1-0 in the next game. We’ll see how they do against Cuba in round 2. 
• What’s with the Italian team? Only 10 of the 28 players are actually from Italy. I saw a lot of commenters saying that their win over Canada was “good for Italian baseball” but how does it help if it’s Dan Serafini and Frank Catalanotto (nothing against those two guys)? 

NPB Tracker is going on hiatus for a little bit — maybe another week or two. In the meantime, you can check out this interview I did with Baltimore Orioles blog Dempsey’s Army, and some content I contributed to the new BaseballDigest.com. Ryo’s sports business articles will continue to appear each week.

Correction, March 15: Marte had actually been with the Royals organization prior to signing with Hiroshima. Thanks to Erik Schullstrom for the info; I wasn’t able to find any information on Marte’s pre-Carp career either in Japanese or English. It is possible that he played under a different name. Either way, I better brush up on my Spanish.

I had been wondering what happened to pitcher Victor Marte after the Carp released him… he’s in camp with the Royals as a non-roster invitee. Looks like he got a minor league deal. 

Marte is a rarity, a Dominican who signed his first pro contract with an NPB team instead of an MLB team. Marte played in the Carp’s Dominican Academy before playing most in the Japanese minor leagues the last few years. Ramon Ramirez and Alfonso Soriano are a couple of Carp Academy alums currently playing in the Majors.

Another MLB-centric post here. Several of Japan’s recent baseball exports have already made their exhibition debuts for their MLB clubs. Here’s a rundown:

• Koji Uehara started for the Orioles today, going scoreless two innings, and allowing a hit and a walk while striking out three. 
• Kenshin Kawakami got the start for the Braves, and also went two scoreless, allowing a hit, and struck out one. 
• Sanspo has pics of both Uehara and Kawakami.
• Junichi Tazawa pitched one inning against Boston College, getting three outs on four pitches, all fastballs. “I wanted to throw a breaking pitch,” commented Tazawa.
• Ken Kadokura pitched an inning in relief in the Cubs Feb 25 game agains the Dodgers. “Looking back on today’s debut game, I was just happy to be there,” said Kadokura.
• Katsuhiko Maekawa hasn’t appeared in a game yet as far as I know, but he’s impressed so far in the Cardinals camp. According to Sanpo, the Cards have five spots open on their pitching staff and Maekawa is an option. I’ll believe it when I see it.

So we know at this point that SoftBank is looking to import a bat toward the end of spring training. Takeuchi-COO, if you’re your listening, here are a few options:

• Dallas McPherson, 3B, Florida Marlins — hit 42 bombs in AAA last year.
• Andy Marte, 3B, Cleveland Indians — former top prospect cleared waivers and is headed back to AAA.
• Mike Hessman, 1B/3B, Detroit Tigers — quad-A type, hit for consistent power in AAA for the last seven years but hasn’t won an MLB job. Doesn’t hit for much average.
• Craig Brazell, 1B/DH, Baltimore Orioles — SoftBank apparently passed on him after Seibu let him go last offseason, but he showed power in Japan last year. Probably needs an injury to make the MLB team.
• Jeff Bailey, 1B/OF, Boston Red Sox — been pretty good in AAA the last few years.
• Scott Thorman, 1B, Milwaukee Brewers — got a shot with the Braves but didn’t hit. Has been pretty good in the minors, looks like another quad-A guy.
• Nelson Cruz, OF, Texas Rangers — the Hawks tried to get him twice last year. Even if Texas is willing to let him go, he won’t get through waivers. Still, SoftBank can dream.

Any other ideas for the Hawks?

Here’s three minutes of video highlights of the last Japan-Australia WBC warm up.

Daisuke Matsuzaka struggled, allowing 5 hits and 2 runs in 2 1/3 innings, but Toshiya Sugiuchi was excellent K’ing 5 on no hits in 2 1/3. In the video you can see him getting a couple of close calls from the plate umpire.

Gwynar of Sim Cental liveblogged the game, so you can check out the play by play here (thanks to reader Mike for the link).

Jan Benner maintains a blog about “punkrock, football, drinks, and other boring stuff” which I’ve been reading since last summer. One of the topics that falls in to the latter category is Japanese baseball, particularly the Koshien high school tournament. I checked his site while I was preparing my Baseball Worldwide post, and found that he had written this article on how he got into baseball. So I asked him if could comment on baseball in his native Germany, and he responded with a detailed essay that is certainly worthy of it’s own post.

I’d like to thank Jan for contributing this information. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I did.

First, you have to keep in mind that North American professional sports can be divided into two or three groups. Sports that were here before and sports that were introduced to Germany. Germany’s main sport is football (soccer). There are football pitches everywhere and if you don’t have sidelines and goalposts kids will use whatever they can get to make up a football pitch. All you need is a lawn in some park. So kids here grow up only knowing football. By the time they enter school they might be introduced to new sports like handball or basketball. This is where the two categories come in. Professional leagues for both basketball and ice hockey have been around for quite some time now. The German national basketball team was the champion of Europe in 1993, the national ice hockey team won the bronze medal in the 1976 Olympics. As for sports like American Football or Baseball they just don’t have any roots around here.

What is interesting to note though is that German kids learn a game quite similar to baseball in primary school. The name of the game is “Brennball” (“brennen” = to burn) which can roughly be translated with “The Burning Ball”. The goal is to send a runner around bases. The runner starts at a home base and throws a soft ball into a field in a hall. So there is no outfield, the runners run around the field. Runners are out when they are touched with the ball by the defending team. Usually there’s teams of around 10-12 players on each side. Both teams send all their players on a run around the bases and the team who scores the most runs wins. There are no innings. Every team has one try to go through its lineup.

Keeping this in mind, people in Germany might know the basics of baseball from an early stage, but because there is absolutely no coverage on TV, there is no way you can learn the rules of the game by simply watching it. You usually hear about baseball in the German media when something outstanding happens, e.g. the Red Sox winning the championship after an 86-year drought or the Marlins winning the World Series in 1997 after only existing for such a short time. Or you get shown the “Randy Johnson kills a bird with a fastball” video on a highlight reel on some sports station.

So baseball fans (and players) in Germany are usually people who went to study abroad in the States either while going to school or as university students. Right now Wikipedia says that there are 30.000 active players in Germany although I think that number is a little high. Just as a comparison, the German Football Association (DFB) has 6 million members. They then might go to see a game of Germany’s highest level of baseball, the Bundesliga.

The Bundesliga is divided into two divisions, a Northern and a Southern division. There is one huge difference to the major leagues in that there is relegation and promotion. So teams can’t be sure to play the highest level the next year. This is a feature present in all European sports, I believe the only league without relegation and promotion is the German Hockey League, the DEL (“Deutsche Eishockey Liga”). In 2008 the German Baseball Bundesliga looked like this:

You might have noticed that some teams use the same names as major league teams. I guess they do this because it’s easier to get uniforms because they just use the major league merchandise.

All teams play four games against each other, two home and two away. Home and Away matches are usually doubleheaders. There is the chance of a shortened game because one team is too dominant and there are extra innings when the teams are tied after 9 innings. In the posteason the best four teams of each division play each other in a quarterfinal. The 1st place team from one division plays the 4th place team from the other division, the 2nd place the 3rd place and so on. Those series are best-of-five series with the first two games played at the home ground of the worse placed team and the final three at the better placed teams stadium.

The players are usually younger (students) and I have heard of Japanese exchange students who played for the team in Cologne during their stay here. The Cologne Cardinals still feature one Japanese player named Kagami Ryo. What’s also interesting to note is that baseball is mostly played on the territory of the former West Germany. Somehow it just doesn’t grow roots in the eastern part of the country.

So baseball in Germany is something for enthusiasts who are willing to sacrifice their spare time for the sport they love. I still haven’t been able to attend a game but I will try to visit one this season. I do know that the turnout is usually low and that people going there know each other quite well since it has the feeling of a family reunion.

The first game of baseball on German soil was played in an exhibition game during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. A massive amount of around 100.000 spectators turned up to watch this. I believe – although I didn’t find any sources to prove it – that during the Nazi Regime the government banned all American things so nothing happened after this game. Then, the end of World War II brought the game back to Germany, but it took another 40 years to finally get a hold here. The German Bundesliga seems to have started during that period as well. Right now the the future of baseball looks rather dark with the lack of sponsors and the constant rise of football and handball.

Some German players have been noticed by the MLB scouting system and have been brought over to play in the Minors. RHP Jennel Hudson played for the Cologne Cardinals and was drafted by the Red Sox in 2007. The Boston newspapers reported on this which is the reason I noticed it. There was no newpaper writeup about the draft over here. Other names are 1B Donald Lutz, C Kai Gronauer, or 3B Ludwig Glaser. Those guys play at the lowest levels of Minor League ball, but still I think it’s quite something they made it over to the USA.

Unfortunately there are no links to English websites dealing with German baseball, so everyone interested has to have at least some knowledge of the German language.
A great resource is MLBInsider, a site run by enthusiats dealing with everything of interest to German baseball fans. This is also where I look when I want to read about German players in the Minors.The official site for the German Baseball Federation also features a subpage for statistics.

And to give you an impression of German baseball, here are some videos of games

• A national contest between France and Germany
• This looks like a training session to me
• A postseason game from 2007

And to round this off the big event this year will be the preliminary qualifying rounds of the Baseball World Cup (not to be confused with the MLB tournament WBC). It seems like 11,000 tickets have already been sold for the games. It’s a 4 team group with Germany, the USA, China and Venezuela, so it looks like the German team won’t stand a chance.

Junichi Tazawa is making a good impression in his first MLB camp, at least against David Ortiz. Tazawa threw 40 batting practice pitches to Red Sox hitters, and held them to 5 “hits”. Ortiz saw 13 pitches, whiffed on 4 of them, and failed to hit any over the fence. Tazawa featured a 92mph fastball, a slider, and a curve in this session.

“I was nervous but happy to throw to excellent hitters. I don’t want to throw any easy pitches. I put my strenght into it,” said Tazawa. Pitching coach John Farrell commented that “his fastball, which was bad last time, was good. The ball jumped out of his hand”. Theo Epstein called it “effective pitching” but cautioned that “it’s too early to evaluate him”.

Nikkan Sports has a good pic of Ortiz swinging through one of Tazawa’s pitches. Tazawa will make his game debut in an exhibition against Boston College on the 25th.

Highlights from Japan’s 10-0 drubbing of the Yomiuri Giants in theire WBC warmup. This clip focuses on representatives from the SoftBank Hawks. Enjoy.