NPB Tracker

Alright, looks like I’ll have time to squeeze in a blog entry this morning. This is about the third time that I’ve thought my hiatus would come to an end, only to have something pull my attention away. This time I’m determined to make it stick.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be looking at offseason plans for players and teams, as well as working on some essay-type stuff. There’s also the playoffs and Japan Series, so there’s plenty to write about.

Let’s start with The Chiba Lotte Marines, who today announed that Bobby Valentine’s contract has been renewed, and have a number of guys who qualify for free agency.

Naoyuki Shimizu, SP: Shimizu was set to be a hot commodity among NPB teams this winter, drawing rumored interested from Hanshin, Rakuten, Yakult, Yokohama and the Giants, but has recently revealed that he intends to pass on free agency this year with an eye toward the majors later on.

Shingo Ono, SP: After a little indecision, Ono appears to be leaning towards free agency. “I feel like would like to remain with Lotte, but they’re developing good young pitchers and I have to think about moving. I have confidence that I can play for another team.” Yokohama is rumored to be interested in his services.

Tasuku Hashimoto, C: Hashimoto feels like he can start, but is stuck behind all-star Tomoya Satozaki, so I think he’ll be likely to try his fortunes somewhere else. A number of teams are rumored to be interested after his strong 2008 season (.311, 11hr off the bench), but Hanshin is expected to make the biggest play to sign him. Current Tigers catcher Akihiro Yano won’t last forever, and there’s no internal heir apparent.

Saburo, OF: Saburo’s two-year contract is coming to an end, and he’s considering his options, which include moving to MLB. Saburo is quoted as saying, “I’ve compared myself to the major league rightfielders that I see on TV, and if I’m going to go now is my only chance.” Saburo is coming off a solid offensive season (.289/.359/.416) and has won Gold Gloves in 2005 and 2007, but he still profiles as a 4th outfielder on most teams.

Julio Zuleta, DH/1B: Zuleta has been plagued by injuries and ineffectiveness in his two years with the Marines. Expect him to be replaced this off-season.

I’ll add these guys to my free agent list tonight. 

Coming up next: a look at some other free agents and the playoffs thus far.

My move is complete and my wife and I are getting unpacked. Hopefully over the upcoming weekend some of the half-written drafts I have piling up will start to make it to a readable state. Look out for new content soon.

Westbaystars-san of JapaneseBaseball.com has released his weekly podcast for October 6. Topics for this week include the penant races, Kazuhiro Kiyohara’s retirement, Marty Brown’s tenure with the Carp, and this year’s race for the Sawamura Award. Michael was kind enough to include some of my content in the section on the Sawamura Award, which he augmented with some context on Hisashi Iwakuma’s historically great season.

You can download the mp3 of the podcast here and check out the archives here.

Fun fact: a Japanese player has appeared in every World Series since 2002, beginning with Tsuyoshi Shinjo with the San Francisco Giants. This year, I’ve noticed a number of NPB connections on the eight MLB playoff teams.

Chicago Cubs

• Scapegoat Kosuke Fukudome played 10 years for the Chunichi Dragons.
• Derek Lee’s father, Leon Lee, and uncle, Leron Lee, both played 10+ years in Japan. Derek has said that he would like to finish his career in Japan.
• Alfonso Soriano came up through the Hiroshima Carp Domican Academy and played briefly in Japan before joining the Yankees.

Los Angeles Dodgers

• Pitchers Hiroki Kuroda and Takashi Saito are NPB veterans. 

Philedelphia Phillies

• Manager Charlie Manual played for the Yakult Swallows and Kintetsu Buffaloes in the late 70’s and early 80’s. 
• Reserve bat Matt Stairs played for the Chunichi Dragons before sticking with an MLB team.
• Bench outfielder So Taguchi played for the Orix Blue Wave alongside Ichiro.

Milwaukee Brewers

• Though neither one is on the playoff roster, Gabe Kapler and Joe Dillon both spent part of a season with the Yomiuri Giants.
• Solomon Torres pitched in Korea before making his MLB comeback.

Tampa Bay Rays

• Man of the hour Akinori Iwamura came over from the Yakult Swallows two years ago.

Chicago White Sox

• Former Softbank Hawk DJ Carrasco is on the White Sox’ playoff roster.

Boston Red Sox

• Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima.

LA Angels of Anaheim

• Anyone know of any?

Work and my upcoming home move have settled down a little bit, so it’s time to catch up on a little NPB bloggin’. There’s no immediate end in sight to my hectic schedule, but I’m hoping to be able to get back to posting 2-3 times a week. 

Let’s start the comeback with a look a this year’s race for the Sawamura Award. With apologies to Satoshi Komatsu and Colby Lewis, two pitchers have clearly separated themselves from the pack: Nippon Ham’s Yu Darvish and Rakuten’s Hisashi Iwakuma. Darvish’s regular season is over, while Iwakuma still has another start left, but we have enough numbers to compare. Here’s my fairly simplistic look at them head-to-head.

Selected Rate Stats

Darvish has an edge here, but it’s minimal. Both pitchers have sub-2.00 ERAs, sub-1.00 WHIPs, and 4+ K/BB ratios. Darvish has struck more guys out, but Iwakuma has better controlled the home run ball. Both guys have been outstanding by these metrics.

Selected Accumulated Stats

Iwakuma has a big edge here in hitting the 20 win mark, becoming the first NPB 20-game winner since Kazumi Saito and Kei Igawa both did it in 2003. This is a particularly phenomenal achievement for a guy pitching for a last place team.

Darvish has been a workhorse, throwing 200 innings in just 24 starts. It should be noted, however,  that he threw two meaningless innings in Nippon Ham’s 17-0 drubbing of Rakuten in the Fighters’ last regular season game to reach 200.

The WHIP numbers shown above give an indication of how unhittable these guys have been this year, and these totals underscore that further. Despite Iwakuma’s remarkable HR allowed total, overall Darvish has been even less hittable.

The Sawamura Award

The recipient of the Sawamura Award is decided by a panel of great NPB pitchers, who in part base their decision on the following criteria (courtesy of Wikipedia):

• Games started: 25
• Wins: 15
• Complete games: 10
• W/L Percentage: .600
• Innings Pitched: 200
• ERA: 2.50
• Strikeouts: 150

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.