NPB Tracker

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.

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.

Hope springs eternal at the start of every season. Here are some spring training notes, mostly on guys who are trying to make their teams.

(All of the below items point to Japanese-language articles)

• Ken Kadokura is testing a two-seam fastball and a sinker, neither of which he threw in Japan. “The movement on my breaking pitches is bigger than it was in Japan,” said Kadokura, “I think I can use these”.
• Junichi Tazawa threw 51 pitches to Jason Varitek. “I was nervous the whole time,” Tazawa said with a smile. “I was concerned that I was stretching my arm more than usual,”
• Kei Igawa threw 15 pitches to Hideki Matsui. Matsui hit eight, and took seven. “I’m glad I didn’t hit him,” Igawa said with big laughter. Last year, Igawa plunked a minor leaguer in batting practices.
• Ken Takahashi got a decent review from Blue Jays pitching coach Brad Arnsberg: “My first look at him was good. We have two open rotation spots. He has enough of a chance to get one. I hope he makes the team.”
• Marc Kroon threw 70 pitches in a bullpen session on the 19th and will appear in an inner-squad game on the 23rd. He’s working on a two-seamer and a shuuto. “first I’m getting back into game shape. I want to get a feel for all my pitches,” he said.
• On his WBC off day, Ichiro travelled 1200km back to Kobe to take batting practice at Skymark Stadium.
• Rakuten manager Katsuya Nomura has come up with an innovative approach to batting practice: tape a picture of Yu Darvish to the pitching machine. Did it work? Nomura looks happy with the results.

Add Yuji Yoshioka to the list of former NPB’ers aiming to catch on in the US. Sanspo is reporting that Yoshioka has hired Ray Pointevint as his agent and departed for LA to work out. Yoshioka, 37, was released by Rakuten after last season, and was passed over by all the NPB teams after his November tryout. He was a key guy in Kintetsu’s fun 2001 team, but hasn’t done much since the early part of the decade.

Yoshioka is also open to a move to Korea or Taiwan.

Former Seibu Lion, Yokohama BayStar, and Yomiuri Giant Tatsuya Ozeki has gotten himself an audition with the Colorado Rockies. The tryout will take place in the beginning of March, which leads me to believe it will be held in the Rocks’ minor league camp.

This is Ozeki’s second attempt to land with an MLB organization. He had a minor league deal with Milwaukee in 2006, but it was voided over visa allotment issues. Ozeki is 32 year-old lefty outfielder coming off a .215 BA season for Yokohama. If he does get a contract he’s likely to be an organizational player.

This offseason, we’ve seen a large number of released NPB players announce an intent to pursue contracts with MLB organizations. I’m not sure if this is a record, but it’s the most I can recall. I’m not including Junichi Tazawa and Ken Takahashi in this list, because Takahashi turned down NPB offers, and Tazawa would have been drafted. All of these guys were either released by their NPB teams, or in the case of Yamarin, not drafted.

• Shigeki Noguchi -> agreed with Blue Jays, failed physical
• Ken Kadokura -> Cubs
• Kazuhiro Takeoka -> Unsigned (Braves?)
• Katsuhiko Maekawa -> Cardinals
• Takateru Iyono -> Unsigned
• Tatsuya Ozeki -> trying out with the Rockies in March
• Ryohei Tanaka -> Orioles
• Michinao Yamamura -> Unsigned (Golden League?)
• Koichi Misawa -> Unsigned (played in the Northern League in ’08)
• Yoshinori Yamarin -> Braves
• Itsuki Shoda -> Sinon Bulls (Taiwan)

Five Players are still unsigned, which doesn’t surprise me, but I can see Yamamura and Iyono getting a shot as they’re still in their 20’s. Takeoka has worked out twice for the Braves and played AAA ball, so he might a chance too.

Notable MLB returnees:

• Jeremy Powell -> Pirates
• Jason Standridge -> Marlins
• Craig Brazell -> Orioles
• Winston Abreu -> Rays

Without a doubt, all of the players listed above obvious face big uphill battles to making it to the majors. But the fact that they are getting a chance indicates either a heightened respect for the level of talent in Japan, or a greater need to find low-cost, low-risk players through non-traditional channels. There will be 22 Japanese players in 14 big league camps this spring.

Reasons not to write these guys off just yet: Tomo Ohka, Takashi Saito, Hector Carrasco, Buddy Carlyle, Brian Shouse and  Pedro Feliciano. Saito looked like he was on the downside of his career when he came over, and none of the other guys had lasting success at the top level in Japan. All have been at least useful MLB players.

Shigeki Noguchi’s agreed-upon contract with the Blue Jays will not be completed. According to Sports Hochi, Noguchi’s physical turned up irregularities in his left (throwing) elbow, and he’s already returned to Japan. Noguchi had been training in Florida in advance of the Blue Jays’ minor league camp opening.

Noguchi wants to continue his career, but said earlier in the offseason that he’d retire if he didn’t get a chance to pitch in the US or Japan. Noguchi failed an audition with Rakuten last autumn.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about Junichi Tazawa, for a reason. This site was basically Tazawa Central in October and November, and I was pretty thrilled when he signed with Boston. Not because I cared about where he signed, but because I was happy that the frenzy was over and I could move on to writing about something else.

But still, this is an interesting story, and perhaps a precedent-setting one. We’ve already seen NPB make a rule change in response to this, and I think we’ll see a lot more MLB teams scouting the Industrial League tournaments this year, looking for the next Tazawa. And rules aside, I expect Tazawa’s performance to be influential — if he does well, I think we’ll see more try to follow in his footsteps. If he’s a flop, that will probably be a better deterrent for potential defectors than NPB could come up with.

So what can we reasonably expect from Tazawa?

Here are his 2009 tournament stats, courtesy of Draft Report:

So Tazawa was dominating his Industrial League competition. Let’s put some context around that though. The highest profile Industrial League games are all short-term tournaments, rather than league games like we’re used to in professional leages.

In the last tournament of the 2008 Industrial season, the Japan Players Championship, Tazawa pitched 20 1/3 innings without allowing an earned run, with a 15/2 K/BB ratio. In that tournament though, pitchers averaged a 2.28 ERA, 5.38 K rate, and 2.64 BB rate. Similar situation in the Intercity Championship, where Tazawa posted a 1.27/11.44/1.91 line (ERA/K rate/BB rate) vs a 2.72/6.37/3.15 tournament average.

Tazawa’s performance was clearly above average, but he did play in a pitcher-friendly series. In America, he will have to adjust to the reality that even in 2A there will be guys capable of hitting his best stuff. This will challenge him to improve on his approach on the mound and preparation for the game.

The largest Industrial League tournaments in Japan have 32 teams, so the winning team plays five games. These are single-elimination tournaments that last a week or two, so do the math on how much and how often the best guys pitch. Looking at last year’s Intercity Championship, which Tazawa’s Eneos won, Tazawa started on Sept 1, Sept 4, pitched relief on Sept 6, started again on Sept 8, and finally closed out the tourney with two innings on Sept 9. That was a total of 28.1 innings in nine days, with no more than three days rest in between apparances. I don’t have pitch count data, but I recall reading that he had gotten around 150 in one game last year (not sure if it was this tournament or another one). And he did wear out down the stretch — in his last appearance he didn’t allow any runs, but was nicked for 7 hits in 2 innings.

The upside here is that the Red Sox certainly won’t put this kind of strain on Tazawa’s arm. He’ll be put under pitch counts and watched carefully. The adjustment he’ll have to make is pitching on a regular, routine basis, instead of the short, extreme bursts of activity with long breaks in between.

There isn’t any defined way to equate performance in a Japanese amateur league to the professional American minor leagues, but there are numbers and context. In a future post, I’ll take a look at how other Industrial Leaguers have acclimatized to the pro game in Japan.

That was easier than I expected — I only had to look as far as my rss reader, where what I was looking for on the excellent Marine Blue blog. The author published a retrospective on Tanaka after he was released by the Marines, which includes abbreviated stats and a number of photos. Highly recommended. The author published similar retrospectives on all the players that left the Marines over the last offseason. 

Here are the stats, re-purposed in English.

Note that numbers prefixed with “E” in the appearances column are Eastern (minor) League appearances. I’ve italicized his 2003, top-level appearances. You can learn a lot more about the Japanese minor leagues on Deanna’s site.

Generally speaking I don’t take minor league stats too seriously. There are too many things to discredit them — the player might be working on a curveball, might be facing guys on rehab assignments, might be playing in front of an inexperienced defense. But from a young pitcher with eight years experience, I’d like to see some signs of improvement and a decent K rate, both of which are missing from Tanaka’s resume. Maybe he’ll take to US coaching and conditioning and improve, but the numbers would seem to indicate that he has a long way to go.