NPB Tracker

Looks like Hideki Irabu is planning on hanging around beyond this season. According to Sponichi, the big righty is looking to continue his comeback in Japan and could join an independent league team as soon as September, after his Golden League season is over.

Irabu has put up a seemingly respectable 3.87 era in eight Golden League starts, and shown a fastball that has reportedly reached about 93mph with a hard forkball. Word is that his right knee, which caused him to retire in the first place, also isn’t bothering him.

Irabu’s agent, Don Nomura, has reached out to NPB teams including Irabu’s former teams Lotte and Hanshin, and Nomura’s stepfather’s Rakuten. An anonymous representive from an un-named team was quoted as saying “he wasn’t a match for the points we need to improve, but I felt his drive”. NPB has a player acquisition deadline of July 31, which essentially closes the door on him playing with an NPB club this season.

It’s interesting to see Nomura in the news again. Nomura has faded out of the spotlight in recent years, but he was once a Scott Boras-like figure who played a central role in bringing Irabu, Hideo Nomo, and Alfonso Soriano to MLB.

As Ryo mentioned in his report on Game 1 of the All Star series, Yu Darvish took a line drive off the bat of Alex Ramirez to the shoulder, and left the game after one inning of work. Sanspo has 1 2 3 pics of the aftermath.

While the rest of the All Stars headed down to Hiroshima for game 2, Darvish stayed in Sapporo to have his arm x-rayed and mri’ed, and was diagnosed with a bruised right (throwing) deltoid. According to Nippon Ham’s team trainer, there isn’t any internal bleeding and aren’t any broken bones, and he’ll resume playing catch as the pain subsides.

Yu Darvish’s Pitching Bible has been on sale in Japan since last week.

The 84-paged full-color book features a special interview, demonstration of his breaking ball and off-speed pitches, and interviews by his former pitching coach, trainer, and catchers. His history will be revealed in depth and the results of the survey conducted to 50 current NPB players regarding his number one pitch will be presented.

The content of the book can be seen here. As mentioned before Yu Darvish will appear on CNN and he is taking the next step in marketing himself; having become one of the best pitchers in recent years. I am not sure how many of his “secrets” will be revelead in this book, but this shows some confidience in letting the nation know that he is not scared to present what he is made of to the whole country or maybe in his case, to the world.

I was able to catch the last couple innings of Game 1 on justin.tv and the slugfest resulted with the Central League defeating the Pacific League, 10-8. The MVP was Norichika Aoki (Tokyo Yakult Swallows) blasting a go-ahead 2-run HR in the 9th inning. Aoki went 2-4 with a 2B, HR, 2RBI, 3RS and a BB.

Aoki has had some struggles in the first half of the season for the Swallows hitting .249 with 7HR and this performance at the break might be a postive for him heading into the second half of the season, with the Swallows hunting for a playoff spot.

Yu Darvish (Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters) went one inning and allowed two hits on 14 pitches. He did not throw the scheduled two innings as he left the game after taking a liner to the right shoulder. According to a statement issued by his team, it did not seem serious. Masahiro Tanaka (Rakuten Golden Eagles) picked up the extra work, going three innings and allowing 2H, ER with 2K facing 11 batters. Daisuke Miiura (Yokohama Baystars) earned the win throwing the last two innings without allowing a hit.

For game two, Hideaki Wakui (Saitama Seibu Lions) will start for the Pacific League and Kan Ohtake (Hiroshima Toyo Carp) will make the start at his home stadium for the Central League in Hiroshima.

Induction Weekend for the Hall of Fame is coming up at Cooperstown to honor the newest members. Associating the Hall of Fame with Cooperstown comes natural for baseball fans here in the States, but do people in Japan know where the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is in their country? I had the opportunity to visit Cooperstown sometime ago, but never had the chance  to visit the Hall in Japan. If some of our readers had the opportunity feel free to chime in.

The Baseball Hall of Fame and Musuem exists inside the Tokyo Dome where the Yomiuri Giants play. The Hall of Fame opened in June  of 1959 and was moved to the current location inside the Tokyo Dome in 1988. We will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Baseball Hall of Fame Museum this season. Within the 50 year history, 168 baseball personnel have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, including the four new members elected this year.

The election process to the Baseball Hall of Fame is similar from the one at Cooperstown. I will go into details regarding the election regulation for the players (For others click here).

• Players will be eligible five years after retirement and will be on the ballot for the following 15 years
• About 300 writers with 15 or more years of experience will be eligible to vote
• Players receiving 75 percent or more votes will be inducted into the Hall of Fame

In a recent news, the members of the American Collegiate National Team took their time to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum while participating in the USA vs. Japan Collegiate All-Star Series. The award ceremony for the inductees of the 2009 season will take place at Game One of the All-Star Game in Sapporo Dome.

I’m participating in a fantasy baseball league this year, at the invitation of Tim Dierkes. It’s the first time I’ve tried fantasy baseball, and while the time I have for it kind of waxes and wanes, I try to look at it every day or two.

One of the guys I’ve had on my roster all year is Mark Buehrle. Today I logged into the fantasy site a bit later than usual, and noticed that Buehrle had a start today, but was on my bench. I quickly moved him into a starting position, and was rewarded with a perfect game. My only regret is that I didn’t see the game. I was off by a couple of time zones.

I’ve never gotten to see a no-hitter all the way through, even on TV. I came close when Jonathan Sanchez threw one a couple of weeks ago for the Giants, but was stuck at work. And those of you who joined me last weekend saw Hanshin’s Atsushi Nohmi take a no-no into the 7th, only to give up a single to Alex Ramirez. Maybe someday.

Yu Darvish (Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters) and Dicky Gonzalez (Yomiuri Giants) will get the starts for the Game 1 of the All-Star game hosted at the Sapporo Dome. Darvish will have only one day of rest in between from his outing against the Chiba Lotte Marines throwing a complete game for the league leading 12th win. He is still scheduled to throw two innings at the All-Star game hosted in his home stadium.

Tetsuya Yamaguchi (Tokyo Yomiuri Giants) will be the first player to participate in the All-Star game starting his career from the Ikusei Player System. Tadashi Settsu, a reliever for the Softbank Hawks will be the only rookie in participating in the All-Star game.

The Fresh All-Star game, which is the All-Star game for the Ni-gun was held at the Sapporo Dome. The starters for this game was Kenji Tsuchiya (Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters), a 4th-round draft pick from 2008, and Taiwan-born Sho Iketsu (Xiao Yijie), a 1st round draft pick from the Hanshin Tigers in the 2008 draft.

The game resulted one-sided with the Eastern League defeating the Western League, 7-0. The MVP of the game was another player hoping to call Sapporo Dome his home in the near future, Sho Nakata. The 1st rounder from the 2007 draft went 2-4 with two doubles, 2RBI, RS, BB and a SB. Taishi Ota, first rounder from the Yomiuri Giants in the 2008 draft went 1-5 with a double.

実際に起こった時に載せることはしなかったのですが、広島がアンディ・フィリップスを加えてスコット・ドーマンと縁を切ったときにもう一人ピッチャーを獲得するために動くのではという噂がありました。

関係者によると、カープはマリナーズAAAに所属するランディー・メッセンジャーと契約合意に至ったのだが、マリナーズと金銭的合意に至ることが出来ず実現には至らなかった事が明らかにされました。

カープはプレイオフ進出を目指す戦いが続いているので、今後とも動きに注目です。

I first learned of Bruce Baskin’s World Baseball Today radio program and website when he left a comment on my post on world baseball from earlier in the year. I checked out the site and was immediately impressed by the breadth of the content. I contacted Bruce with some questions about the state of baseball around the world today, and he was kind enough to share his insight.

NPB Tracker: Can you describe your website, podcast and radio show?

Bruce Baskin: World Baseball Today has primarily been a radio program on Radio Miami International since 2007. WRMI is a 50,000-watt shortwave station that can reach listeners on all continents when weather conditions are right, and they’ve been running WBT Sunday mornings at 10:30 Eastern since Day One. The show is also repeated 2-3 times later in the week, depending on how their schedule goes. WRMI’s owner-GM, Jeff White, is president of the National Association of Shortwave Broadcasters, and he’s been super to work with. It’s been a really nice fit.

The WBT blog and podcasts have both been pretty ancillary, to be honest. Once I’m done producing the radio program and mp3 it to Miami, I’ll post the text on the blogsite and upload the program audio to the podcast site, although I’ve been having “issues” with Podbean, which is the server for the podcasts, and I haven’t been able to make the program available
for online listeners. Really kind of frustrating.

NT: What sources do you use to gather the information for your site? Do you have English-language sources for all these leagues?

BB: Most of my sources have been in English, although I do use Google translations from time to time… sometimes THOSE need translating as well. I go through MLB.com’s story archives for major league news, MILB.com for stories from the Mexican League and, surprisingly, the Caribbean winter leagues… they really cover those well. I’ve found BaseballdeCuba.com to be a good source for the Cuban National Series, although sometimes you have to do a little digging for stuff.

There are a lot of good sources for baseball in Asia: JapaneseBaseball.com, NPBTracker.com and JapanBall.com are all good for stories about the Central and Pacific Leagues, and JapaneseBaseball.com is a good starting point for news from South Korea and Taiwan, too. There are also three good blogs I use. EastWindupChronicle.com is a good one, and there’s also TaiwanBaseball.com and KoreaBaseball.com. I’ve found the Baseball Philippines website to be informative, although it’s a little incomplete and runs behind sometimes.

For European baseball, there’s a very good “one-stop” website called Mister-Baseball.com that I use almost exclusively for stories from the leagues there. It’s an absolute dream for anyone tracking all the national leagues over there.

NT: Where are we seeing baseball growing in popularity?

BB: I’m not sure there’s any one place where the game is really exploding, but it seems to be growing fairly quickly in Southeast Asia. Indonesia and Thailand have decent national teams, and I know there’s a lot of interest in building the game in Vietnam and Cambodia. I have to admit I was surprised at how well Pakistan and Sri Lanka did in the Asia Games earlier this year because cricket is THE big sport in both places. This is one region where baseball could do something in the next few years.

I think there’s a slow but steady growth in Europe, although soccer is by far the biggest sport pretty much everywhere. The two wins over the Dominican Republic by The Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic were huge for European baseball, but I’m not sure that’s translated into a growth spurt.

There are some MLB teams opening academies in Brazil, so that might be a place to keep an eye on, too. There are some great athletes down there.

NT: Conversely, the Internet is making information more available than ever before. Are we seeing an increase in interest in international baseball from American fans?

BB: I think there’s been some increase in interest, but Americans are pretty insular when it comes to sports and culture. For instance, sports fans will watch the biggest events, like soccer’s World Cup or Olympics basketball, but that hasn’t translated into those same people following English Premier League soccer or pro basketball in Spain or Italy, for instance. Generally speaking, if the USA isn’t directly involved in something, we don’t tend to pay attention.

The World Baseball Classic is potentially a terrific showcase for international baseball, but you seem to hear almost as much complaining and criticism of the WBC as you do praise among Americans. I’ve felt for a while that if the WBC were whittled down to a one-week midsummer tournament exclusively in American ballparks, interest would grow in it. Right now, it’s a little bit long for American fans, and having it during spring training seems to offend some people, including baseball people. I am no fan of Bud Selig, but I applaud his desire to see the WBC succeed. As a fan of the sport, I love the WBC.

NT: Where is the next source of international talent?

BB: There’s a lot of effort to develop talent in Europe, and I think we’re starting to see MLB teams get more involved with tryout camps and short-term academies over there. I’ve mentioned Southeast Asia as a potential breeding ground, and there’s plenty of room to grow the game in places like South America and the Indian subcontinent. The difficulty baseball faces right now is that in these countries, they’re dealing with raw athletes and not ballplayers because people don’t generally grow up playing baseball.

I’m very interested in seeing how those two young pitchers the Pirates signed out of India do, because that’s a country of over a billion people with a total mania for another bat-and-ball sport, cricket. Baseball and cricket are obviously two different sports, but they share some very basic elements.

I have to admit I’m not very optimistic about mainland China’s chances of becoming a baseball hotbed. There has been a lot of time, effort and money spent trying to develop baseball there, but it doesn’t seem to be catching on. They’re already demolishing the two stadiums used for baseball in the Beijing Olympics, and I don’t foresee the government getting behind the sport…and if the Chinese government ain’t behind something, it ain’t gonna succeed.

NT: What are your favorite leagues to follow as a fan?

BB: You know, I’ve kind of gotten into Baseball Philippines a bit over the past couple of years. The BP website is a little incomplete and inconsistent at times, and it was really hard to track them last fall, but I love the passion Jonas Terrado has in his game accounts. He cares, and it shows. I’ve enjoyed following guys like Vio Roxas, Vladimir Eguia and the Laurel brothers (Jay and Matt). The Philippines has a lot of potential in baseball. It’s a country with over 100 million people and baseball’s a fairly popular sport there. I’ve thought the American military presence there for so many decades should’ve led to baseball’s growth in the same way it’s grown in other countries we’ve occupied in the past, but it just hasn’t worked out.

Another place whose leagues I enjoy following is Mexico. Only place in the world where pro baseball is played year-round, and there’s a great history of the sport there. I spent two years writing about Mexican baseball online with a column called “Viva Beisbol,” and I was really surprised how popular it became. Overwhelmed, actually, because “Viva Beisbol” was just a creative outlet for me on the OurSportsCentral.com website and I had zero expectations in terms of public interest. However, there were about 6-7 other websites that picked it up and carried it, including the Mexican Pacific League’s official website. To this day, that’s probably the biggest honor I’ve ever gotten in writing or broadcasting.

NT: What’s next for World Baseball Today?

BB: Ironically, I’m getting back into Mexican baseball in August. I’ve decided to sort of revive “Viva Beisbol” as a radio program called “Baseball Mexico” on WRMI, and it will replace “World Baseball Today” on Sunday mornings.

It was a tough choice to make because I’ve had fun covering all the different leagues that are out there, but I’ve gotten frustrated because the nature of WBT has made it an “inches deep, miles wide” type of program. A lot of what I’ve been doing with WBT has been somewhat redundant because I’m giving out information already available to fans online, and my past experience with “Viva Beisbol” indicates a lot of interest among Americans in Mexican baseball, especially people in border states like Texas, Arizona and California.

This doesn’t mean I’ll stop following baseball in other leagues. I want to see who wins the Pacific League pennant in Japan, whether Puerto Cruz runs the table during the playoffs in Spain, and what kind of numbers Roberto Petagine ends up with in Korea.

NT: Thanks Bruce!

Seibu has officially announced the acquisition of Jonah Bayliss from the Blue Jays. He’ll wear number 42 in Saitama, and no financials were announced.