NPB Tracker

Title says it all, here are the bullet points. Everything’s in Japanese for this edition:

• Remember Naoya Washiya, the California jr college player who was drafted by Washington last year? He’s been released and has returned to Japan.
• Orix is bringing former KBO and 3A pitcher in Hyang-Nam Choi for a workout. Choi is 39, but prior to this season he put up good numbers in 3A stints with Cleveland and LA, including a very solid season last year as a reliever in Albuquerque, a notoriously hitter-friendly environment.
• Rookie Yusei is returning to Seibu’s farm team after a two-month layoff due to shoulder discomfort. I’ve written very little about the prospect formerly known as Kikuchi this season, but his pro career is off to a bit of a rough start.
• Yu Darvish’s July 3 start is available on justin.tv, spread across 1 2 3 links. Darvish showed great velocity, struck out 10, and worked from the stretch all the time in this game. Darvish set a new NPB best with a 155 km/h fastball, which he threw by Masato Nakamura on an 0-2 count. The pitch can be seen at about 47:22 of the first link.

It’s not year that we see a 20 game winner in NPB. The last pitcher to pull it off was Hisashi Iwakuma, with his remarkable 21-win season in 2008. The last time prior to that was 2003, when Kei Igawa and Kazumi Saito each won 20, and shared the Sawamura Award. Bonus points will be awarded to the reader who can name the last 20-game winner prior to Igawa and Saito.

At the halfway point this season, a number of pitchers have won enough to have a shot at 20:

So will any of them do it? Assuming good health, each one of these guys should get 10-13 more starts this year, so, as always, winning 20 will require both effectiveness and luck.

If I were to place a bet on one of these pitchers winning 20, I think I’d reluctantly go with Tohno. The Giants will keep winning and he’s been very effective, but Tohno doesn’t go deep into games and will rely on his bullpen to lock down wins for him. The fact that Maeda, the only other Central Leaguer on this list, plays for the also-ran Hiroshima seems to work against him, but remember that Iwak

I could see one of the Pacific League pitchers making a run too, but the Pa-League is so balanced this year it’s hard to guess which one.

A couple of velocity charts have caught my eye this week. Here they are:

• Ryota Igarashi has had a rough go of things in New York — this follows a rough end to last season with Yakult. Taking a look at the data from last year, his fastball velocity noticeably lower in his last four appearances. He’s averaging about 93.5 mph this season.
• Another guy who’d seen a noticeable dip in velocity is one of my favorites, Kazuki Yoshimi. He was throwing harder on July 1, and had a decent game until allowing four consecutive singles in the 8th inning. Overall, Yoshimi’s numbers this year have been solid, but more pedestrian than last year: low to mid-3.00’s ERA, 6-ish K/9IP.
• On the other hand, Kyuji Fujikawa’s fastball velocity seems to have increased this season.Kyuji is having another dominant year, with 47 strikeouts in 31 innings.
• Chris Bootcheck made his first start in Japan on June 27, going 6.1 IP, with 6K, 0BB, 2ER while getting the win. Here’s what he mixed in.

Update, July 2: Completely forgot about this year’s SoftBank Hawks alternates.

It’s time again for my annual alternative uniforms roundup (last year’s is here). Here’s what we have this year:

• Yomiuri will sport these cartoonish threads July 19-21 against Yakult. The uniforms were designed by middle school student Hikaru Nomoto, who’s design was selected from out of more than 13,000 entries.
• This season Seibu is wearing 70’s era throwback uniforms, from when the team was known as the Taiheiyo-Club Lions, prior to Seibu ownership.
• Nippon Ham chose a garish gold color for this season’s We Love Hokkaido uniforms.
• The differences between Yokohama’s normal uniforms and this season’s summer alternates are subtle, but pitcher Shun Yamaguchi still called them “unusually stylish”. I wouldn’t mind seeing them keep it simple and re-use these from a couple years ago.
• Orix’s summer uniforms are red this year, which elicits memories the old red Kintetsu uniforms. Orix also recalled the old Blue Wave team by wearing 1995 throwback uniforms in a game at Skymark Stadium last month. 1995, of course, was the year that Orix lifted the city of Kobe by reaching the Japan Series after the horrific Hanshin Earthquake.

Today’s Japanese vocabulary is 復刻版ユニホーム, (fukkokuban uniform), meaning “re-issue uniform”, though in English we would translate that to “throwback uniform” or “retro uniform”.

Alright, time for another edition of NPB Bullet Points. Today we’ll look at some notable home runs that have been hit over the last week or so.

• Craig Brazell had a six-game home run streak end on June 23rd against Hirohima. Sadaharu Oh and Randy Bass jointly hold the home run streak record at seven games. Brazell had been leading the Central League (and Japan) in dingers until…
• Shinnosuke Abe got hot. Abe hit his 10th home run in June on the 23rd, marking the third time in his career he’s reached double digit home runs in a month. Abe commented, “right now in my at bats, in a good way I’m thinking ‘I’m a foreign hitter. I have awesome power’.” He then went out and hit two more bombs on the 26th to take over the league lead from Brazell. Abe is capable of hitting home runs in bunches; back in 2004 he opened the season with 20 homers in 33 games.
• When Abe’s Giants teammate Alex Ramirez went deep for the 20th time this season on the 22nd, he become the second foreign player to hit 20 homers in each of his first ten seasons in Japan. The first? Tuffy Rhodes, of course. Ramirez had this to say: “I hit my first home run in Japan in a Yakult uniform at Jingu Stadium, so I’m glad I was able to achieve this in this ballpark.”
• This happened a few hours after the original publication of this post, but Hanshin veteran Tomoaki Kanemoto hit his 450th career home run on the 27th. Kanemoto is just the 13th NPB player to reach that mark, and the first since Rhodes last year.

In unrelated news, the San Francisco Giants retired the number of Hall of Fame outfielder and African-American pioneer Monte Irvin today. It’s a bit overdue but definitely a feel-good story.

A couple of new imports this week to report…

• Seibu has brought back Jose Fernandez back to Saitama on a $300k deal. Fernandez played for Seibu in 2004-5, and has spent seven years in Japan overall. He had been tearing up the Mexican League with a 1.010 ops this season, after Orix cut him loose last year.
• Yokohama has officially introduced Brett Harper, who passed an audition last week and signed a contract earlier this week. It’s an interesting contract that pays based on how many games Harper appears in at both levels, topping out at $100k. The deal also includes an option for next year. Harper is a big first baseman who has bounced around four MLB organizations since a strong 2008 season for the Giants 3A affiliate in Fresno. This signing kind of reminds of when the BayStars acquired Cedrick Bowers a few years ago,

Was playing around with the ol’ db and wrote a quick query to pull out average fastball velocities this season in Japan. These are exceedingly simple lists; I didn’t filter by number of pitches thrown or anything like that.

Here are the 15 fastest averages:

No surprises here, mostly relievers and many foreign pitchers, though I didn’t expect to see Wolfe. Morillo, de la Cruz, Uchi and Yang have all thrown very few innings so take their appearance on this list with a grain of salt for each.

And here are 15 slowest:

No real surprises here either, though it is striking to see how much softer Watanabe throws than everyone else.

Put the 2010 Chiba Lotte Marines season down as something I was wrong about. In a year when I thought they’d be mid-division at best, Lotte has by meany measures been the best team in the Pacific League this year. They lead the league in team scoring with 370 (SoftBank is next with 323), run differential at a whopping +106 (Seibu has a +32), batting average (.284), and home runs (72). The pitching staff has done its job too, holding the opposition to 264 runs in 67 games. Lotte has fallen behind Seibu in the standings, but if they keep this up, as they have through the first three months of the season, they’ll be in the race all year.

I’ve only watched two Lotte games this year (a Yuki Karakawa start against Seibu early in the year, and a game against SoftBank prior to interleague), so I’m not the best guy to analyze Lotte’s success (I would recommend this guy, actually), but I won’t let that stop me. Here are a few observations.

In the lineup…

• Tsuyoshi Nishioka and Toshiaki Imae are healthy and hitting like the Tsuyoshi and Imae we all know and love.
• Takashi Ogino was having a great rookie year until he went down with a knee injury that required surgery.
• Everyone’s getting on base: Lotte has five of the Pacific League’s 10 best OBP’s lead by Tadahito Iguchi with a robust .450. Iguchi is leading Japan in walks with 59; no one else has more than 42 and no one else in the Pacific League has more than 35.
• With a .290/.372/.524 slash line, Kim Tae-Kyun has been the best Korean hitter we’ve seen in NPB since Lee Seun-Yeop’s heyday, and has already given Lotte more production from their foreign hitter slot than they got from anyone they had last year.

On the mound…

• Yasuhiko Yabuta has put up outstanding numbers in his return engagement, and SoftBank castoff Akichika is looks like an inspired pickup.
• Bill Murphy has moved into the rotation and won all six starts he’s made so far. I’m trying to think of the last time a suketto had any success as a starter with Lotte… Dan Serafini maybe?
• Yoshihisa Naruse is off to a strong start, with 95 K’s in 104.1 innings so far to go along with a 2.95 ERA. I could see him setting new career highs in innings and strikeouts this year.
• Hiro Kobayashi has made a successful transition to the closer role, picking up 12 saves so far this season.

There are a few minor question marks…

• Ogino won’t be back until the All-Star game, in late July. His return should be a huge boost.
• Yuki Karakawa has been out since taking a line drive off his right hand on May 13, and his return is unclear.
• Without Karakawa, a rotation front three of Naruse, Murphy and Shunsuke Watanabe is a shade below the front three’s of Seibu, Nippon Ham, and Rakuten.
• Spare a thought for Shunichi Nemoto, who was replaced in the lineup by Iguchi despite a solid 2008 season, and has fallen into no-man’s land.

The Pacific League is pretty well-balanced this year, so you never know what will happen, but Lotte’s chances look pretty good.

A couple of velocity charts this week jumped out at me:

• Eulogio de la Cruz made his Yakult debut on June 15, and showed great velocity but bad command. Case in point: he hit 158 kmph on the gun, but it was on a fastball in that dirt.
• Another Yakult pitcher, Yoshinori, hit Rakuten with a barrage of fastballs last Sunday. He too showed strong velocity, but had very few strikeouts to show for it.

News and notes from around NPB, mostly in Japanese this time around.

• Orix took this year’s Interleague title, and a with it a 50m yen ($500k) award for the team. The emergent T-Okada was credited as the hero of yesterday’s game, but stalwart slugger Alex Cabrera was 3-4 with two rbi’s and is hitting .394 on the season. Orix is now 32-30-1 in what I thought would be a rebulding season.
• Hichori Morimoto has racked up enough service time for international free agency. When asked about it, he responded in jest “I’m interested, you know, in America”, then added, “I care about how other teams evaluate me, but playing for the Fighters is the best.”
• Hisashi Iwakuma has also qualified for domestic free agency, but that’s a bit of a non-event given that he’s already under contract with Rakuten for next season. He’s represented by IMG, though, and I think he’ll make the MLB move after 2011, assuming he remains healthy and effective.
• The Giants called up Taishi Ohta, and he made his first professional start on the 12th, going 0-3. He had another 0-3 outing on the 13th.
• Yu Darvish’s June 12 start is archived on Justin.tv. Catch it while you can.
• Akinori Otsuka attended a Padress-Mariners game over the weekend, and still wants to make an MLB comeback. It won’t be this year though. Aki had his third elbow (ひじ) surgery this past January, and has been playing catch for about three weeks. He’s hoping to be throwing at full strength in October. Aki is 38, so a comeback is a tall order given his injury history. Keiichi Yabu returned to MLB ball at a older age, but he was coming back from ineffectiveness, not injuries.
• Here’s one in English: veteran NPB writer Jim Allen takes a look at Lotte’s hot first half.

And finally, off-topic content this week inspired by the South African-hosted World Cup: Emeka Okafor’s Timbuktu Chronicles and Appfrica, a blog site run by an Ugundan tech incubator. These outstanding blogs highlight areas of African resourcefulness and innovation.