NPB Tracker

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)? 

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.

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.

Japan manager Tatsunori Hara has settled on a WBC roster. Here it is:

Pitchers
Yu Darvish
Takahiro Mahara
Masahiro Tanaka
Hideaki Wakui
Daisuke Matsuzaka
Minoru Iwata
Hisashi Iwakuma
Kyuji Fujikawa
Tetsuya Utsumi
Satoshi Komatsu
Shunsuke Watanabe
Tetsuya Yamaguchi
Toshiya Sugiuchi

Catchers
Kenji Johjima
Shinnosuke Abe
Yoshiyuki Ishihara

Infielders
Hiroyuki Nakajima
Yasuyuki Kataoka
Akinori Iwamura
Michiro Ogasawara
Shuichi Murata
Munenori Kawasaki

Outfielders
Kosuke Fukudome
Norichika Aoki
Seiichi Uchikawa
Yoshiyuki Kamei
Atsunori Inaba
Ichiro

(SI has the AP article as well)

Notable departures are Nobuhiko Matsunaka (achilles problem), Kenta Kurihara (affected by elbow surgery last year), Toru Hosokawa (right shoulder pain), Tsuyoshi Wada, and Takayuki Kishi. Health reasons were not cited for Wada and Kishi.

Overall, the roster looks pretty good to me, though it’s somewhat short on power.The inclusion of Yoshiyuki Kamei makes no obvious sense to me, but I could see him as a defensive replacement/pinch runner. The only other questionable pick I see is Shunsuke Watanabe. He’s been hit or miss in NPB, and as I recall he wasn’t that great in the 2006 WBC.

Two WBC-related videos to pass along… the first is Rakuten pitcher Masahiro Tanaka taking on Ichiro. Tanaka gets the better of him with a battery of breaking pitches.

And here’s a video of the whole team working out. The most notable thing about this clip is that there were, according to reports, over 40,000 people on hand to greet the team. I doubt that 40k people made it in to the stadium, but you can see that the whole infield lower deck and the rightfield bleachers are full. Keep in mind this is workout and not an actual game.

Also, here is a collection of pics from Sanspo.

Man, it is pouring here in Silicon Valley on this President’s Day weekend. Great time to do a little bloggin’

The Japanese sports rags have been publishing pics of NPB camps for a couple of weeks, but now that MLB & WBC camps are opening we’ll get coverage of those as well:

• Japan’s WBC camp has opened in Miyazaki, southern Japan. Several thousand fans were on hand to see Ichiro et al work out at Sun Marine Stadium. Here’s a pic of Ichiro and Daisuke Matsuzaka, with Yu Darvish in the background.
• Kenshin Kawakami signs his first few MLB autographs.
• Koji Uehara gets a slap on the back from O’s manager Dave Trembley.
• Kei Igawa is pitching for a job, or for a trade.

…while it lasted.

Jack Zduriencik and Don Wakamatsu can breathe a sigh of relief. Ichiro’s flirtation with the mound is over. Word got back around to Seattle’s brass and coincidentally, Ichiro announced that he’s stopping. I’m sure the Mariners would have found out about this anyway, but I’d like to think that NPB Tracker played a role in this development.

Anyway, after his mound session on the 7th, Ichiro took three days off. Ichiro is training on his own so we don’t know if he would have taken those days off anyway, but when he returned, he commented to Sanspo: “my upper-right body is still. I’m quitting (pitching) (big laughter)”. Nikkan Sports had a similiar quote: “my shoulder is stiff and won’t move. Getting caught up with pitching got me into a little trouble”*. And with that, Ichiro returned to hitting and fielding drills in the wonderful Green Stadium Kobe Skymark Stadium.

I think Ichiro proved a point — he has enough baseball talent to do something like this with credibility. Most of the commentary I saw on this was positive, aside from the Mariners fans who were reasonably worried he’d get hurt. It’s tempting to think we could see Ichiro play in the field and then come into pitch — it’s too bad he doesn’t throwlefthanded, so we could see him play in the field, pitch to a batter, and then go back. Maybe it’s better for this to be part of the Ichiro folklore, but I’ll go on the record and say I would like to see him pitch in a real game.

Before I go, let me be pedantic and clear up a couple of mistranslations I’ve seen around the web on this story:

• Ichiro didn’t throw 21 curveballs, he threw his first breaking pitch on his 21st throw
• There was never any mention of Ichiro throwing a curveball, only forkballs
• Ichiro isn’t training with Team Japan. He’s training on his own at Kobe’s Skymark stadium, and he has a couple former players working out with him
• As far as I know, Tatsunori Hara didn’t ask Ichiro to warm up as a pitcher. From what I’ve seen he simply said he’d have to use a fielder in an emergency situation given pitch count and tiebreaker rules, and Ichiro took to the mound on his own. If someone else knows differently, let me know.

*The phrases Ichiro used are a little ambigious to a non-native Japanese speaker like myself. Here’s the original Japanese: 「肩がパンパンになって動けなくなった。調子こいてピッチングしたらエライことになった」

Not to be outdone by Ichiro, Akinori Iwamura has dusted off his pitcher’s glove and begun working on his repertoire. Sanspo, of course, has the news and a picture. According to the article, he has six breaking pitches, including a cut fastball and a shuuto. No word on whether he can reach 92 with his heater. 

So does Tatsunori Hara have another option for emergency situations? Let’s ask Iwamura: “there won’t be an appearance. Ichiro-san will go for us (laughter)”.

You might remember a post I did last year that had a link to Ichiro pitching in the 1996 NPB All-Star Game. Ichiro came out and immediately hit 90 on the TV gun on his first warm-up pitch, and then induced a soft grounder from pinch-hitter Shingo Takatsu.

Nearly 13 years later, Japan WBC manager Tatsunori Hara has, perhaps unintentionally, prompted Ichiro to return to the mound by suggesting that using him in emergency situations is a possibility in this year’s tournament. In his workout on the 7th, he skipped batting practice and worked out as a pitcher. He threw 56 pitches off the mound at Skymark Stadium, throwing fastballs and forkballs. Word is that he hit 147kmph (92mph) with his fastest pitch. Ichiro said he wants to throw a little bit harder.

Sanspo has a series of photos of his work out: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Hara isn’t used to managing games that go beyond 12 innings, which might explain the idea of using a position player as a pitcher. Ichiro would probably be the most credible pitching candidate among the fielders in this year’s WBC. However far-fetched it might be, we might see Ichiro pitch in a competitive game this year.