NPB Tracker

Interesting news out of Fukuoka — the SoftBank Hawks have sent team COO Takanori Takeuchi* and head coach Koji Moriwaki on a business trip to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. On the agenda is to watch a handful of Winter League games, and look into creating ties with a baseball academy in the Dominican. Sponichi quotes Takeuchi as saying, “even to if it’s just to stimulate our farm team, we’re considering bringing in Dominican players (as instructional players). If possible we’d like to affiliate with an independent academy “. He added jokingly, “we were given an extra bag to bring back foreign players.” Nishi Nippon adds another quote from Takeuchi: “there are academies that are not affiliated with the majors over there. Going forward we’d like to build cooperative relationships.”

If SoftBank does indeed set something up, it would be the third NPB academy in Latin America. The Hiroshima Carp have an academy in the Dominican, and the Yakult Swallows have one in Brazil. Both have graduated players to the NPB level, but the Carp’s Academy has been particularly successful in that it’s produced MLB players Alfonso Soriano, Timo Perez, Robinson Checo, and Ramon Ramirez. 

*Takeuchi has an eye for talent. He was in the US during the summer trying to convince the Rangers to sell Nelson Cruz’s contract to SoftBank.

It’s the first week of January and none of the major Japanese free agents have found MLB homes yet. Let’s check in on a few of them:

• The Japanese press picked up on a Boston Globe article suggesting that the Red Sox had offered Takashi Saito a contract shortly after he was non-tendered by LA. Nikkan Sports adds that he got a deluge of almost 10 offers in December, including one from the Cardinals. Nikkan Sports suggests that he’ll be able to beat the $2.5m the Dodgers offered, and will spend the early part of the year narrowing down his options.
• Outfielder Tatsuya Ozeki is yet another minor league-level guy eyeing a move to the States. Ozeki actually signed a minor league deal with Milwaukee after the 2005 season, but never played in America as the Brewers had used up their allotment of work visa applications. You can read more about Ozeki at the BR Bullpen.
• But wait, there’s more! Former Chiba Lotte pitcher Ryohei Tanaka is still another minor leaguer trying out for the American minor leagues. Tanaka will be heading to America on the 8th for private instruction from pitching guru Tom House and tryouts. He doesn’t have the same level of experience as Ozeki.
• Ken Takahashi might be starting to sweat a little bit. He’s quoted in the Chugoku Shimbun as saying, “I can’t see anything ahead.” The article also reports that he spoke to agent Peter Greenberg once at the of 2008, but they didn’t have anything concrete to talk about. Sponichi reminds us that the Mets and Cubs were publicly interested last year, but haven’t yet talked terms with Takahashi.
• Ryan Glynn to the Yokohama BayStars is a done deal. Glynn signed on for a year at $900k.
• And finally, the Orix Buffaloes are still looking to add a foreign position player. Said team president Nakamura: “this isn’t a sweet world where we can assume this year will be good because last year was. We still need to rely on foreign players”. Nikkan Sports has Orix looking at Jose Fernandez and Richard Hidalgo. Acquring them both would give Orix four foreign position players (Tuffy Rhodes has played in Japan for so long that he no longer counts as a foreign player), though Greg LaRocca and presumably Hidalgo would be injury risks. 

Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.

American writer Rita Mae Brown, 1983

Sponichi is reporting that Seibu is going to take another shot at posting 35 year-old lefy Koji Mitsui. Mitsui, as you’ll recall, was posted in December but failed to attract any bids from MLB teams. Said Mitsui: “I was heartbroken (not to get any bids), but I again felt like I want to play in America, so I made the request”. Team president Shinji Kobayashi added “we want to do something to help him fulfill his hope.”

I don’t think anything has changed since Mitsui’s first posting period ended less than two weeks ago. He’d probably generate more interest if he went out to Arizona for a throwing session, and then started the bidding. This second posting seems rushed to me.

Found on Hochi Sports via Yahoo: former Yomiuri Giant John Wasdin is on his way back to Japan, this time on a one-year deal with the Seibu Lions. Wasdin was pretty mediocre for the Giants back 2002, though I remember him being much worse than his numbers indicate. Either way, he wasn’t given much of a chance to prove himself with a Giants team that went on to win the 2002 Japan Series.

Seibu team president Maeda says that Wasdin has improved on his breaking pitches and control, and that they expect him to start in 2009.

First bullet points of the new year… let’s get started.

Japanese Articles

• The Tadahito Iguchi rumor mill is heating up a little. According to Nikkan Sports by way of Sports Nifty, the Chiba Lotte Marines are prepared to start the negotiations at 2 years, 400m yen ($4.4m at the current exchange rate).  The article speculates that they could go a little higher as they have the diasppointing Julio Zuleta’s 260m yen ($2.86m) annual salary coming off the books.
• Nikkan Sports reports that Daisuke Matsuzaka will be training with his former team, the Seibu Lions in preparation for the World Baseball Classic. Matsuzaka will train with Seibut at his own request.
• Nippon Ham manager Masataka Nashida has announced that Yu Darvish will be his opening day starter. Not really news, but it’ll be a tight schedule with the WBC wrapping up shortly beforehand. In the same breathe, Nashida said that he wants to face Hanshin in the Japan Series this year.
• Yomiuri Giants reliever and 2008 R0Y Tetsuya Yamaguchi will be doing his pre-camp training in Arizona at the Fischer Sports Gym, where Randy Johnson works out in the offseason. In other training news, Yakult reliever Ryota Igarashi is also heading to Arizona to train at the same gym Nomar Garciaparra uses.
• The Hiroshima Carp have been flooded with a deluge of orders for their new uniform.

English Articles

• The Saitama Seibu Lions are changing their look that’s suited them pretty well over the years. Simon isn’t a fan, and I have to say neither am I.
• Deanna racked up quite an impressive pile of ticket stubs in 2008.
• 2008 Sawamura Award winner Hisashi Iwakuma signed a 3-year, 1.1bn yen ($12.1m) deal with the Rakuten Eagles. This is a rare case of a top player getting a multi-year deal prior to reaching free agency in Japan.
• Jim Allen has a couple of players to watch in 2009.

I’ll be appearing on Mike Silva’s NY Baseball Digest radio program Sunday evening at 7:00 pm est (check here for the time in your area). You can listen online here, and New York area readers can listen in on 1240am WGBB.

Time to close out this series with some conclusions. I fear that I may be oversimplifying this a bit, but I’m looking for macro trends with this. These are casual observations, I didn’t do any hard research. 

Check the three previous installments here: 1, 2, 3. 

1. Most of the teams that lost a star to MLB took some kind of a hit in the standings. With the exception of Hiroshima, the teams losing the top 10 players listed below took years to replace the production they lost. Some of the teams still haven’t replaced the production they lost. It’s also important to remember that none of these departures happened in a vacuum; there were other things that affected the performance of each team, but overall the lose of these players has hurt their former teams competitively.

2. The only team that really took a popularity hit after losing a star to MLB was the Giants after losing Matsui. I bought walk-up tickets to a Giants game in 2005, which would have been unthinkable a few years earlier. Of course, while the Giants were down, the Tigers and Dragons were both up and have enjoyed competitive success and popularity since the early part of the decade. SoftBank has been less competitive since losing Johjima, but has not suffered at the gate. The team is actually adding 6000 seats to the Yahoo Dome for next season to help meet demand. 

3. Signing foreign talent to replace departed stars doesn’t seem to work. Teams will often sign foreign players to fill the holes left by departed stars, but when the do so, they’re losing the opportunity to add depth at other positions with those roster spots. I can’t think of an example where a foreign star was a long-term replacement for an MLB bound star. Colby Lewis was great as Hiroki Kuroda’s replacement in 2008, but so was Kevin Hodges a few years ago and he flamed out after a single season.

4. Losing talent to MLB has a trickle-down impact on the smaller market teams. As an example, Hanshin may have been content with their outfield had Shinjo stuck around, but two years after he left they signed Tomoaki Kanemoto away from the Carp to play left field. Kanemoto has gone on to become a legend for the Tigers while the Carp have only recently begun to show signs of life. Hanshin and Yomiuri can spend to fill their holes, while smaller market teams like Hiroshima cannot.

5. On the positive side, stars moving to MLB has opened up (or could potentially open) spots for younger players, in a league where there is no rule 5 draft and blocked prospects and depth guys are seldom traded. We haven’t seen too many cases of prospects jumping in and filling the shoes of the top 10 guys I’ve listed below, but others have stepped in for 11-26.

Overall, I don’t think this trend is killing NPB. Attendance is stable, and Japan Series television ratings were up this year (mostly because the Giants played in it). Many of the players who have made the leap to MLB have actually been pretty successful, which has greatly improved the credibility of NPB overseas. On the downside, the loss of star players has hurt the competitive depth of the affected teams, and led many to question the viability of the league. I seeing the loss of these star players as an “Oakland A’s-ing” of the league — the A’s have gotten by with smart management, an ability to exploit market inefficiencies and a willingness to continually reinvent the team on the field. The A’s style doesn’t translate to the Japanese game completely, but the underlying principles of thrift and creativity are important for a group of teams that generally is not going to compete with MLB financially.

Below is a list of all the players I looked at, ranked in order of how much I think their departure affected their previous team and the league. For me, there are really about three or four classes: Matsui and Johjima, Iwamura through Iguchi, and everyone else. You can possibly put Matsui, Kobayashi and Yabuta in their own class as well, as guys who were quickly replaced but did leave a gap in their absences. 

* I forgot about both these guys when compiling the original lists. Mori was successfully posted and signed with Tampa Bay, but got hurt in his first spring training and was never heard from again. Iriki played in the Mets and Blue Jays organizations, but got busted for PED usage and never reached the Majors. He resurfaced with Yokohama in 2008, but retired after the season.

** I left out Yukinaga Maeda as well.

Updated, Jan 2: The rumor of a final offer from the Orioles to Kawakami has been debunked — Pete Schmuck of the Baltimore Sun has the details. I should note at this point that it was only Sanspo that ran this report, other Japanese sources have said simply that Kawakami and the Orioles are “deep in negotiations“.

Sanspo has published a report saying that the Orioles have made their final offer to Kenshin Kawakami, and are waiting for a response. According to the article, the O’s have concerns about the health of Kawakami’s throwing shoulder, and are offering an incentive-laden deal. Agent Dan Evans is holding out for a higher base salary. Given that it’s an incentive-laden deal, I’d speculate that it would be a short term contract as well. The concerns over Kawakami’s arm are a bit eyebrow-raising for me; Kawakami missed time with a strained back and an undisclosed minor injury last season, but had otherwise been pretty healthy recently.

Rumors persist that the Orioles are interested in Koji Uehara as a starter, and Baltimore was the only club to show any interest in catcher Ryoji Aikawa at all.

This information has been out there long enough for me to link to an English source.

Hitoki Iwase, who earlier in the offseason declined to file for free agency, signed a four-year deal to remain with Chunichi. His salary in the first season of his contract will pay him 430m yen ($4.73m at today’s exchange rate), with salaries to be renegotiated yearly afterward. But according to Iwase, money wasn’t the driving issue:

”I realized that I am not cut out to pitch overseas,” said Iwase. ”I originally joined this club because I liked it and the environment suits me. I’m determined not to let the team down and to make sure that I fulfill my role in games we can win next year.”

Given the weak market for MLB relievers this season, Iwase did well financially, at least for the first year of his contract. We’ll see how the deal looks in a few years. Iwase will be in his late 30’s by the time the deal ends, making him likely to be a lifelong Dragon.

Every new year begins with a list about the old one. Here’s my 2008 list of notable events in Japanese baseball.

10. Ichiro Reaches 3000 total NPB/MLB hits; has 8th consecutive 200-hit season
Ichiro has started his MLB career with eight straight 200-hit seasons, tieing Willie Keeler’s century-old mark for most consecutive 200 hit seasons. Ichiro has also surpassed 3000 hits in his NPB/MLB career and needs three more to surpass Isao Harimoto’s record for Japanese players (3085).

9. Daijiro Ohishi keys surprising Orix turnaround
Orix was 21-28 when manager Terry Collins quit on May 21. Ohishi took over and led the team to a 2nd place finish with a 75-68-1, including a 55-40-1 mark while he was at the helm.

8. Kazuhiro Kiyohara Retires
Kiyohara finally succombed to injuries after being in the national baseball spotlight since the early 80’s, first as a high school star, then as a 22-year NPB veteran.

7. Hideo Nomo Retires
MLB pioneer retired in June after being released from the KC Royals and failing to hook on with another team. He was last seen coaching for the Orix Buffaloes in the team’s fall camp. 

6. Junichi Tazawa signs with Boston
Tazawa became the first consensus first-round draft pick to forgo professional baseball in Japan for a career in America.

5. Bobby Valentine and Chiba Lotte agree to part ways after the 2009 season
After a series of disagreements, Bobby V and Chiba Lotte agreed not to renew the manager’s contract beyond 2009.  Bobby took the Marines from being a perennial doormat to being a perennial contender, while also serving as one of the top advocates for Japanese baseball.

4. Hisashi Iwakuma edges Yu Darvish for the Sawamura
Iwakuma won 21 games  for the also-ran Rakuten Eagles to take his first Sawamura Award & Pacific League MVP. Darvish was more dominant by some measures but had to settle for second best in ’08.

3. Seibu beats Yomiuri for Japan Series Title
 In a return to form for both teams, the Lions beat out the Giants in a closely fought, 7-game Japan Series. Seibu remarkably won the Series just two years after losing ace Daisuke Matsuzaka to the Red Sox.

2. Team Japan Disappoints in the Olympics
Japan’s NPB star-studded team couldn’t beat Korea, Cuba, or the USA and finished out of the medals for the first time since the 2000 games in Sydney. The performance led to Senichi Hoshino’s departure as the Japan National Team manager. 

1. Sadaharu Oh Retires from Field Duties
 Oh retired as field manager of the Fukuoka Daiei/SoftBank Hawks after 14 years on the job. Oh led the Hawks to Japan Series titles in 1999 and 2003, and a Japan Series appearance in 2000. Oh will remain with the Hawks in a front office capacity.

Honorable mentions: So Taguchi becomes the latest NPB vet to win a World Series Ring; 2008 crop of Japanese MLB imports mostly disappoint; Hiroki Kuroda thows a gem against the Braves; Hisayoshi Chono refuses to sign with the Chiba Lotte Marines in the hopes of being drafted by the Giants