NPB Tracker

If you follow NPB Tracker on Twitter, you might have already seen that Yusei Kikuchi won at Koshien again yesterday.

I was watching the game on Justin.tv and availed myself of the site’s watch later feature, so you can check out the game from the beginning by following this link. You can also check out the previous game, Chukyo’s 15-5 drubbing of Nagano here.

I wrote a bit about Kikuchi last spring, but this was my first chance to really see him in a game. He definitely has a live arm, with a heater that maxed out 154 kmph (~96 mph) but mainly seemed to range between 140-148 kmph (86-92mph).  He went to his secondary stuff quite a bit, showing a slider with good movement, and a slow curve that appears to be more of the get-me-over variety at this point. He still has work to do on commanding his breaking pitches, but the movement is there and he changes speeds well.

Kikuchi has gotten public attention from just about every NPB, with Hanshin and Yomiuri reportedly very interested in selecting him. I wrote about the MLB teams that watched in spring as well, notably the Rangers and the Mets. More MLB scouts have been watching him this summer, though I’ve learned to take that kind of news with a grain of salt. Daily Sports reported that the Cubs and Twins were in attendance for his August 17 game, but surprisingly I didn’t see any reports of MLB scouts at yesterday’s game.

Just when we thought the swine flu epidemic was behind us, and NPB teams even resumed the use of jet balloons, the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters caught the bug. Five players and staff were infected with the flu, and as a precaution every player and staff was checked. Six additional players were diagnosed with a slight fever and the team decided to let those players rest until they recover.

Three of the players who are thought to be infected with the flu are Termel Sledge, Shota Ohno, and Naoki Miyanishi. The six additional players diagnosed with fever symptoms were some of the main members of the team including CA Shinya Tsuruoka, INF Eihichi Koyano, INF Tomohiro Nioka, OF Yoshio Itoi, LHP Tomoya Yagi and RHP Kazumasa Kikuchi.

The team is currently in first place in the Pacific League with a seven game lead, but losing the core of the team for an extended period of time could be a problem. Top prospect Sho Nakata will be getting another opportunity with the Fighters due to the absence of these players. If he makes the most out of this opportunity, the Fighters might have an X-Factor going into the playoffs.

Yusei Kikuchi’s Hanamaki-Higashi is facing off against Tohoku at Koshien today. You can bet a few MLB scouts will be on hand for this game. Check it out live below:

Watch live video from Welcome to http://npb.club.tw/ on Justin.tv

Sanspo and others are reporting that Daisuke Matsuzaka is expected to make his return to the Red Sox on September 8th vs the Orioles. Matsuzaka has been training in Florida for the duration of his stay on the DL and should return to Boston with an attitude adjustment. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next in the saga; look out for more on that here in the future.

In other Red Sox news, Junichi Tazawa is getting another MLB start, this time against the Yankees on August 22.

With Kaz Matsui becoming the latest player to enter the Meikyukai by surpassing a total of 2000 hits between NPB and MLB, it seems like a good time to address what the Meikyukai is and how players can enter the Golden Players Club.

The Meikyukai was first organized by Masaichi Kaneda in 1978 as a voluntary organization, but quickly became a corporate organization built by former players with Kaneda as the president and Shigeo Nagashima and Sadaharu Oh as co-vice presidents. The Meikyukai was organized with the goals of giving back to disadvantaged in the community and contributing to build the grass roots of professional baseball. Main activities of the club includes teaching classes to the younger generations, promoting baseball and participating in volunteer activities throughout the communities.

In order to join the Meikyukai, there are some milestones players need to surpass. Pitchers are able to join after earning 200 or more wins or 250 saves. On the other hand, position players need to surpass the total of 2000 hits. The regulations changed in November 2003, such that the numbers can be a total combined from both NPB and the MLB. Three current players on MLB rosters have made it in to the Meikyukai; Hideki Matsui of the New York Yankees, Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners, and now Kaz Matsui of the Houston Astros. The list of every player in the Meikyukai can be seen here.

The next pitcher in line to join the Meikyukai are Masahide Kobayashi, who is 17 saves shy. Tuffy Rhodes, were he eligible, would need 114 more hits (as of 8/16; thanks to commentor passerby for the clarification). A list of the other players nearing induction can be found on the Meikyukai’s website.

Two Players

One way or another, Stephen Strasburg is going to make history. He’ll either sign with the Nationals for a record-setting bonus, or he won’t and something unprecedented would happen. The idea of Strasburg going to Japan in an attempt to attain free agency was floated and quickly discredited, and rightfully so. The details of why it wouldn’t work have been thoroughly documented so there’s no point in rehashing them here, so it’ll suffice to say that Strasburg is unlikely to get the contract that Scott Boras is seeking from a more restrictive NPB system.

Last week we got the news that Texas Rangers draftee Tanner Scheppers is also considering Japan. Unlike Strasburg, we have some evidence that Scheppers is actually taking action to pursue Japan — he apparently has a work out scheduled for “at least half a dozen NPB teams” (hat tip to John Brooks). Scheppers is a little different from Strasburg — he isn’t nearly as highly touted, he was drafted and unsigned last year by Pittsburgh, and he’s spent the last season playing for the St. Paul Saints, with guys like current Hanshin Tiger Craig Brazell. Scheppers was also drafted from a professional league, so the Rangers get until next year to sign him. Still, if Scheppers’ goal is simply to get a bigger bonus out of the Rangers, a move to Japan is unlikely to achieve his desired result.

Two Other Players

It’s worth pointing out that Strasburg and Scheppers aren’t really in uncharted territory here. In 2002, Cincinnati Reds draftee Mark Schramek tried out with the old Orix Blue Wave after failing to draw an offer he was happy with. Gary Garland recalled the Schramek story in an editorial when the idea of Strasburg to Japan idea was first floated:

I got on the imaginary phone in my head and dialed up Mr. Peabody to ask him to lend me his wayback machine. I set the controls for the heart of the 2002 season, where I came upon one Mark Schramek, who had just been drafted in the first round out of the University of Texas at San Antonio as an infielder by Cincinnati. The Reds, not being entirely forthcoming with the readies that Master Schramek had his heart set on, decided to journey to Japan and contemplate a season with the Orix Blue Wave as leverage to squeeze more money out of the historic Ohio nine. Orix later responded to Schramek’s overtures by demanding that he sign a nine year contract with them. This was pro forma, as Orix was not happy being used as an “ateuma (that is, a horse that is used to get a stud horse all hot and bothered in preparation to be bred with another mare in hopes of producing successful horse racing offspring)” and basically offered Schramek a deal they knew he would refuse.

Schramek went on to have a forgettable four-year run in the minors, never advancing beyond 2A.

A guy that actually kind of made it work was Matt Randel. Randel was not a prospect of even Schramek’s caliber, but  managed to get an NPB contract, and made a few appearances in Japan before having a couple of respectable seasons in Korea. The following summary is taken from the BR Bullpen:

Matt Randel is a highly unusual American pitcher in that over 80% of his baseball career has been in Asia.

Randel was an 84th-round pick of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1995 amateur draft. He went on to college instead of signing, but dropped out. He got his big break in 1999 when he tried out for the Daiei Hawks and was signed. He allowed hits to 2 of the 3 batters he faced for Daiei in 2000.

Randel next was picked up by the Fort Worth Cats, going 4-5 with a 3.05 ERA in 2002. Had he qualified, he would have been among the Central Baseball League leaders in ERA.

The Yomiuri Giants signed Randel after his stint in Texas and he was 1-1 with a 7.71 ERA in 3 games for them in 2003. The next year, the 27-year-old was 3-2 with a save and a 5.45 ERA in 24 games, his busiest season in Japan. He did strike out 42 batters in 39 2/3 innings.

After leaving Japan, Randel caught on with the Doosan Bears of South Korea. He debuted in the Korea Baseball Organization in 2005 with a 12-7, 3.25 record despite allowing 163 hits in 149 2/3 IP. In 2006, the Doosan hurler posted a 16-8, 2.95 record.

Randel’s salary was unlikely to be much higher than the league minimum for any of the time he spent in Japan. The Hawks made a few other international signings around the time they had Randel, notably Anderson Gomes.

So we have some anecdotal evidence showing that NPB teams are unlikely to partake in money games with blue-chip prospects, but will perhaps take on lower-risk, lower-reward guys. It would be great to see more international prospects developed in Japan, and there are some likely some prospects who profile well to the opportunites Japanese and Asian baseball can offer, but that won’t be the blue chip guys.

My posts (1, 2) on flaws with MLB draft (and by association, the NPB draft) elicited some interesting and occasionally impassioned responses.

After writing those original posts, I came across some interesting ideas put forth by writers whom I read regularly. Here are a couple of the more interesting ones:

Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus speculates that we might see a more controlled draft in the future:

Said one exec, “Look, Bobby Abreu can’t find a job and then signs for $5 million. While 16-year-old are getting signed off sandlots in the Dominican for $3 and $4 million? That’s the kind of thing that’s going to get the union going,” he added, while predicting than during the next bargaining session, once the players figure out what they want, them giving into financially harnessing the signing system for both draftees and international players will be what they use for leverage.

There are also some indications that both sides might not be willing to wait for the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, as multiple sources have indicated that the reason for Bryce Harper’s early entry into college in order to be eligible for the 2010 draft revolves as much around his desire to sign within a system with no limits, rather than being subject a more controlled draft that could be in place sometime down the road.

Jim Allen of the Daily Yomiuri seems to favor more of a universally free system:

[Junichi] Tazawa was able to choose the club he thought was the best fit for him. A Japanese who aspires to take his game to the highest levels here has to negotiate with the team assigned to him through NPB’s draft. By going to America, he could choose from among different options.

Draft apologists say the system is necessary to maintain competitive balance, which it has. But its purpose from Day 1 was to cheat amateurs of the right to sell their own services to the highest bidder.

In most markets, this would be considered contemptible. It’s an indictment of the baseball business that depriving people of their rights is standard operating procedure in MLB and NPB and acceptable to the fans.

Commetor Crawdad of the Orioles Hangout, had my favorite response to my original post:

What might work better would be that teams pay into a draft bank. The bank receive money in a progressive format where teams that take in more money than others pay more to it. Each team is allotted 35 slots and those slots have a cost fixed to them that decrease.

For instance:
1 slot at 5MM
1 slot at 2.5MM
1 slot at 1MM
1 slot at 0.5MM
1 slot at 0.3MM
15 slots at 0.05MM
15 slots at 0.015MM

Players can sign with any team and if a player exceeds the slot in terms of MLB performance, MLB pays dividends out to the players until they reach arbitration.

So there is impetus for change and ideas being articulated. I hope we see a more free, fair system sometime in the future.

Watch live video from Welcome to http://npb.club.tw/ on Justin.tv

Or if you want to watch later…

NPB has started the process of implementing video reviews for homeruns. The reviews took place in the home ballparks of the Central League teams on August 11th, leaving only two stadiums actually testing the video reviews due to the Hanshin Tigers vs. Chunichi Dragons game being played at Kyocera Dome (Koshien is in use for high school baseball).

The video reviews for now will not directly affect the game and will be a learning process for the umpires to smoothly implement the steps of reviewing a homerun without slowing down the game. The official time table for introducing official video reviews has not been confirmed yet. Hidetoshi Kiyotake, president of the Yomiuri Giants states, “Testing it this year, attempting a trial run in spring training games, and installing officially from the start of the 2010 is ideal.”

MLB had its road to implementing the video reviews and it has been a smooth process, so it was a matter of time until the NPB tries attempting the video review to get the right calls on close home runs.

I captured some justin.tv footage of Koshien from the other day. You can check it out here.