NPB Tracker

The Giants and Lions followed up Saturday’s pitcher’s duel with another closely fought game, as Yomiuri tied the Series up on Alex Ramirez’s walk-off home run. I didn’t get to watch the game, but I’ll share the Yahoo Japan box score and the YouTube highlights that I’ve found. Seibu starter Kazuyoshi Hoashi put a lot of runners on base, but his defense made plays behind him and kept the damage to a minimum. I didn’t realize that Seibu’s chunky 3rd baseman Takeya Nakamura was that competent with the glove.

You can catch Ramirez’s walk-off bomb at about 2:50 of this video. Seibu reliever Shinya Okamoto threw forkball in the dirt with his first pitch, then threw another on 0-1. He elevated the second one, and Ramirez took the mistake over the center field fence. Ramirez’s hero interview starts at about 4:55 in the same video.

For another view, check out the write-up at Tsubamegun.

Game 3 will be on Tuesday, Nov 4 at the Seibu Dome in the exotic Tokorozawa, Saitama.

I’ve added some updates to my free agent list. Here is a summary.

International Free Agents

• Hitoki Iwase (RP, Chunichi Dragons): Iwase will decline free agency and remain with Chunichi.
• Tomohiro Nioka (SS, Yomiuri Giants): My gut feeling is that the Giants are done with Nioka. Nippon Ham is interested.
• Hirokazu Ibata (SS, Chunichi Dragons): Staying put.
• Naoyuki Ohmura (CF, Softbank Hawks): Traded to Orix, missed qualifying for free agency by 13 days. Will be a Buffalo next season.
• Atsunori Inaba (OF, Nippon Ham Fighters): As expected, will remain with Nippon Ham.
• Daisuke Miura (SP, Yokohama BayStars): Hanshin is preparing to offer Miura a 4-year/12-oku yen ($12M) contract. Miura says he wants another shot at a title.

NPB-only Free Agents

• Ryota Igarashi (RP, Yakult Swallows): Staying with Yakult for now, with an eventual eye to the majors.
• Hidetaka Kawagoe (RP, Orix Buffaloes): Reportedly ready to move after being offered a pay cut by Orix. (Thanks to reader Jeff B for the tip)

I was hoping to find some time to write a preview of the Japan Series, but now that it’s started I’m a little too late.

Seibu took Game 1, with Hideaki Wakui trumping Koji Uehara in a 2-1 pitchers duel. I didn’t get a chance to follow the game, so I’ll point you to English write-ups at Tsubamegun and Japanball.com, as well long and short YouTube highlights.

Despite Seibu’s game 1 win, I think the Giants have a slight edge in the Series. I like the Giants rotation of Uehara/Greisinger/Utsumi/Takahashi a little better than Seibu’s group of Wakui/Hoashi/Kishi/Ishii, and I think the Giants have a deeper bullpen as well. Seibu scored a lot more runs during the regular season than the Giants, the starting lineups are pretty equal.

Of course, I’ve only done a really rough eyeball analysis of the two teams, so I could be way off. On paper, this is a pretty even matchup and I hope all seven games will be as close as game 1.

As you no doubt know by now, Junichi Tazawa went unselected in the recent NPB draft, clearing the way for him to sign with an MLB organization. While official negotiations reportedly won’t start until Nov 24 or so, Tazawa is meeting with representatives from the Mariners and Braves on Tuesday. I’ve picked up on about six teams interested in Tazawa, with the most recent addition to the mix being the Phillies.

Update, November 1 afternoon: Okay, it’s raining out here in Silicon Valley so I might keep going with this. Here are the teams that I’ve seen reported in the media as having interest in Tazawa:

• Boston
• Atlanta
• Seattle
• Pittsburgh
• Detroit
• Chicago Cubs
• Philadelphia

Japanball.com has the Kyodo version of the story I published above.

Time for another edition of NPB Bullet Points. Randomness abounds, as usual.

Japanese Articles:

• SoftBank sent outfielder Naoyuki Ohmura to Orix in exchange for outfielder Arihito Muramatsu, in a trade that sends both players back to their previous teams. I had previously read that Ohmura’s contract was up and he was considering attempting a move to the majors, but now it seems like he stick with the Buffaloes.
• Hideo Nomo is back in the news: Orix manager Daijiro Ohishi has invited him to the team’s autumn camp as a special instructor, and Tatsunori Hara has expressed intertest in having him on his pitching coach for Japan’s WBC entry. Meanwhile, Nomo’s been training with his Osaka-based amateur team, the Nomo Baseball Club.
• Speaking of Hara, after winning the rights to select Taishi Ota in the draft, he pumped his fist until SoftBank manager Koji Akiyama got the point.
• Yokohama released the long-time star Takuro Ishii. The team asked Ishii to retire, but he hopes to continue his career elsewhere.
• Nippon Ham is looking for righthanded hitting, and willing to trade star closer Micheal Nakamura or 2006 RoY lefty Tomoya Yagi to acquire some. The Figthers feel like they have a surplus of pitching, and are targetting Tomohiro Nioka and Kodai Sakurai in a potential trade.
• Rakuten is planning some seating upgrades to the unfortunately named Kleenex Stadium Miyagi. The team is adding seating right on the field behind home plate.

English Articles:

• Bobby Valentine commented on his blog on the selection of Hisayoshi Chono in the draft. Apparently Chono refused to talk to Bobby before the draft.
• Simon over at jhockey has a Robert Whiting piece on Sadaharu Oh.

npbtracker.com was down for an hour or two this morning, due to issues my webhost was having. Apologies to anyone who couldn’t access the site during this time.

The outage was during my normal writing time, so there won’t be any real post for today.

The draft has come and gone, and thanks to a late night in the office I got to follow it live a little bit. I’m not going to write up the whole thing, because Deanna has already done an excellent job of that. Instead, let’s take a quick look at where the guys I’ve written about landed:

Hisayoshi Chono: Backed off his demand to be selected by the Giants at the last minute; was subsequently selected by the Chiba Lotte Marines. We’ll see if he signs.

Yi-Jie Hsiao: Selected by Hanshin with their first round pick. Hsiao was actually Hanshin’s third “first” choice, but they lost out on their first two.

Krissada Shirakura: Not selected. It’s on to the industrial leagues, or perhaps a pro league outside of Japan for Shirakura.

Son-Hyon Shin: Taken by Hiroshima in the fourth round.

Rafael Fernandez: As expected, snagged by Yakult with an instructional player pick.

Yoshinori Yamarin: Not selected, even as an instructional player. Will he sign a minor league deal with the Braves?

Hayato Doue: Drafted with Softbank’s final instructional round pick.

Junichi Tazawa: NPB teams respected his wishes not to be drafted. I thought someone might take a flier on him with a late-round pick, but it didn’t happen.

One unfortunate result of the draft is that the excellent Draft de Anbo site is down. The site slowed down to a crawl during the draft, so I guess they violated their host’s traffic policies. The site is still down, but I hope to see it back soon.

Every so often, an amateur player comes along who refuses to play for any team other than the Yomiuri Giants. This year, that guy is Honda outfielder Hisayoshi Chono. Chono has been willing to put his money where his mouth is in the past: Nippon Ham took him out of college with a mid-round pick, but he refused to sign and instead moved on to the amateur Industrial League. This time around, he’s said he’ll remain with Honda unless the Giants select him.

Chono has reportedly been on as many as 10 teams’ short list for draft candidates, but some fluxuation is starting to be reported. Nippon Ham unsurprisingly took him off their list. Yakult pulled him off their list, but then put him back on. And Hanshin is said to have narrowed down their choice for their top pick to Chono and Waseda University outfielder Keijiro Matsumoto. 

Having said all that, I don’t quite understand what the hype around this guy is. I haven’t seen him live, or even in a full game on TV, but I did find this 10 minute game footage reel of him via Draft Reports. And I’m not impressed. He is very clearly vulnerable to breaking pitches; check out the sequence at about 6:00 where Junichi Tazawa feeds him nothing but curves and sliders, resulting in a strikeout and a booted grounder. He does seem to run and throw reasonably well in the video.

Still, it seems like there’s a pretty good chance that he’ll get selected by someone with a reasonably high draft pick. It’ll remain to be seen whether it’s the Giants or someone else, and if he sticks to his guns this time.

Add Tokyo Yakult Swallows reliever Ryota Igarashi to the list of guys that is looking for a future move to MLB. Igarashi is a domestic free agent this year, but will decline to file so that he can pursue an MLB contract later on. Igarashi is said to be looking to make a “Shinjo class” move, which is to say he wants to come to America for the experience rather than the money. And if he truly follows the Shinjo model, he’ll return to Japan to finish his career.

Igarashi has already begun negotiating his next contract with Yakult, and it appears that he stay in Yoyogi at least for next year. Igarashi spent nearly two years on the shelf due to Tommy John surgery, but came back in July and posted solid numbers for the Swallows. Most notably his 42/6 K/BB ratio indicates that his control, which was never a strong point pre-surgery,  has improved dramatically.

A few links to pass along this morning…

Japanese Articles:

• Was Marty Brown fired? No, he wasn’t.
• SoftBank is sending pitcher Nagisa Arakaki to America for surgery to clean up loose bodies in his throwing elbow. In retrospect, having him throw 164 pitches in a game may not have been the best idea. (Box score in English)
• Orix has released pitcher Yuki and infielder Shogo Makita. Makita will join the front office, while I imagine Yuki will catch on with another team.
• Chunichi wants to offer Tyrone Woods an incentive-laden contract with a big pay cut from this year’s $6M base. Team president Junnosuke Nishikawa says they’ll work with Woods after the draft, adding that the team will be scouting foreign players in this year’s Dominican Winter League. Woods had previously been reported as being on his way out of Chunichi, but it appears that the door is still open for a return.

English Articles:

• Wayne Grazcyk dissects the one-game advantage given to the higher-seeded playoff teams. 
• Yomiuri Giants manager Tatsunori Hara will run Japan’s WBC effort.