Juan Morillo has been demoted to ni-gun. Unfortunately, his lack of command has translated to NPB. His velocity has been as advertised though.
On the flipside, Matt Murton is off to a hot start in Japan, having reached base safely in all 13 games so far this season. His slash line is a robust .407/.484/.556.
Takayuki Kishi took a no-hitter into the 7th against Orix on the 6th, and finished with a one-hit shutout. Bonus points to those of you who can recall Japan’s last no-hitter.
Tsuyoshi Wada set a new career best with 15 strikeouts against Lotte on April 8.
The Hanshin Tigers picked up lefty Yusuke Kawasaki for cash from the Chiba Lotte Marines. The last trade that Hanshin made with Lotte worked out pretty well for the Tigers, netting them Yasuyuki Kubo.
The Japanese baseball media has an uncanny ability find and point out obscure streaks. Examples? Last week, Nippon Ham’s Kensuke Tanaka’s streak at-bats without hitting into a double play ended at 862. On the 11th, Hiroshima’s Tomonori Maedawent yard for the first time in 686 days.
In a rather forward-thinking move, Nippon Ham is limiting Yu Darvish’s pitch counts to 120 per start. Darvish surpassed 140 pitches in two of his first three starts, and Ham is concerned about keeping him healthy for the whole season.
Belated congratulations to Shingo Takatsu, who has now saved games in Japan, the US, Korea and Taiwan. I hope he plays Winter League ball somewhere this year.
According to Sanspo, SoftBank will be working out American pitchersJD Durbin and Michael Olmsted after the Hawks’ game against Rakuten on April 18th. SoftBank had looked for pitching reinforcements after failing to retain the services of Justin Germano, but didn’t make add any arms over the off season.
Durbin has 72.2 MLB innings under his belt, and was last seen in the Show in 2007. Olmsted played in the Mets’ low minors in 2007 and 2008, which would make him an ikusei-level prospect.
Here’s a fun diversion from our usual business of Japanese baseball: the moribund Edmonton Oilers have signed Swedish forward Linus Omark away from the KHL. Edmonton drafted Omark in the 4th round back in 2007.
Despite a casual interest in European hockey, I first heard of Omark when everyone else did — last year when his creative shootout goal hit YouTube. I’ve seen more of Omark since, and he really is a clever player, and a lot of fun to watch. I’m looking forward to seeing how his game translates against more physical players on the smaller NHL rink. Here are some clips, enjoy!
Patrick » 08 April 2010 » In NPB Tracker » Comments Off on A Brief Commercial Message
My work on NPB Tracker has afforded me the opportunity to contribute to some top-notch baseball publications. I’d like to take a moment here to plug them:
Rotowire.com: a couple months ago, I mentioned my contribution to Rotowire’s 2010 Fantasy Baseball Guide. I’ve also been providing subscriber-only player updates to Rotowire.com for about a year, and this season I have a spot on the Rotosynthesis blog. If you partake in fantasy sports, this is a great resource. My work can be found here.
FanGraphs.com: I hope this introduction will be unnecessary, but Fangraphs has become perhaps the top destination for sabermetric analysis on the web. As with Rotowire, I recommend checking out the whole site, but here’s my author page.
It is my great pleasure to contribute to both of these sites, and I hope you’ll make them regular stops on the ‘Net.
Last weekend in Hiroshima, Yomiuri coach Takuya Kimura was hospitalized after collapsing during a pre-game “sheet knock” exercise. On April 7th (JST), he died of subarachnoid hemorrhaging. Kimura was 37 years old and was in his first season as a coach, having retired as an active player after last season.
Kimura finished his playing career with the Giants and started with the Fighters, but I’ll remember him best from his time with the Carp, where he played while I was living in Japan. He was an all-around solid player who played a number of positions well, a trait he become more famous for with the Giants. Daily Sports has a few photos, including one of him catching for the Giants in a game last September.
It’s been a rough year for NPB with the losses of Hiroyuki Oze, Shigeru Kobayashi, and now Kimura. Let’s hope that we won’t get any more of this type of news for a long while.
The always insightful passerby left a comment latest Yu Darvish post, pointing us to the heralded pitcher’s unfiltered thoughts on the latest round of MLB speculation. In a blog post titled “A Certain Sports Paper“, Darvish himself has responded to what Sponichi published.
Here’s my translation:
“I want to make a brief statement,
Recently, a certain sports paper is making noise about the majors or something, but that’s really unfortunate.
Basically my “climbing the staircase step by step” comment was about my technique. (even that writer understands)
It’s too bad it was doctored like that.
That’s all.
It’s unfortunate.”
I always welcome peer review of my translations, and this time is no exception.
Eric Stults’ is indeed heading to Japan, with the Hiroshima Carp emerging as the victor for his services. According to the Chugoku Shimbun, Stults gets a salary of about $700k plus performance bonuses, with a $50k signing bonus and and option for second year. The apparent loser in the Stults derby, the Hanshin Tigers, is apparently set to add Jason Standridge.
I don’t know what happened with the negotiations, but this is the second time in recent memory the Tigers didn’t get the pitcher they were after: during the offseason, Rakuten beat Hanshin to the punch on Juan Morillo. I wonder if the fact that more of Hanshin’s acquisition targets get leaked to the media than any other team has something to do with that. Or maybe they’re naming guys that they really aren’t interested in.
Anyway, getting Stults is an interesting move for the Carp. Rotation depth is a good thing for any team, and the Carp lost Colby Lewis in the offseason and have Kan Ohtake on the shelf. But if I had to pick an area for the Carp to improve on, I’d say their lineup could use a little more pop. I really liked the Andy Phillips acquisition last season. And adding Stults does introduce a roster squeeze for the Carp, as they’ll have to choose which four of Stults, Giancarlo Alvarado, Mike Schultz, Justin Huber and Jeff Fiorentino to carry. Still, this gives them the chance to carry the guys who are contributing the most regardless of position.
Hanshin getting Standridge was a little bit of a surprise for me. Their big issue right now is instability in their rotation, and I’ve always thought of Standridge as a reliever… but that’s kind of a mis-perception on my part. He started in Japan with SoftBank a couple years ago, and has starting experience at several minor league levels. Apparently one of the things Hanshin likes is that he has Japan experience and knows a bit about what’s getting into. According to Nikkan Sports (linked above), Hanshin was looking at guys on the fringes of MLB rosters, but wanted someone who they could sign and have on board quickly, to get the team through April and May.
If waiting was an option, they might have taken a look at Cleveland lefty Jeremy Sowers (my own speculation here). Sowers is a polish/command starter who has been back and forth between the Majors and 3A for the last four seasons. He’s never had any trouble putting up strong 3A numbers, but outside of some initial success hasn’t been effective at the MLB level.
