NPB Tracker

Just before the start of the 2003 season, I remember seeing a news piece on Kazumi Saito. Saito was going into his seventh professional season, and despite having a career mark of just 9-4, he had been selected as the then Fukuoka Daiei Hawks’ opening day starter. The piece was about how it was time for him to step up and live to his potential, but  I was skeptical. I liked Hayato Terahara better and thought that starting Saito on opening day was a bad sign for the Hawks. I was way off on that one; Saito went 20-3 on the season and shared the Sawamura Award with Kei Igawa, as the Hawks cruised to their first Pacific League title since 2000.

Since his breakout season in ’03, Saito has been dominant when healthy but otherwise a non-factor. In his three healthiest years (’03, ’05, ’06), his cumulative record is 54-9(!); the rest of the time it’s a more pedestrian 25-14. The difference in his other stats is apparent on his page at JapaneseBaseball.com.

Injury History
Before we go any further, we need to take a look at Saito’s Priorian injury history, courtesy of Wikipedia. 

1997: “Loose shoulder”. Briefly converted to a hitter, appearing in a few games as an outfielder.
1998: Shoulder surgery.
2001: Unspecified shoulder issue.
2004:  Missed time due to “not being able to get into shape”, hit hard when he was in.
2005: Missed his opening day start due to shoulder pain, rebounded to have a great season.
2006: Sat out of the US-Japan All-Star Series with shoulder inflammation.
2007: Missed time with muscle fatigue in his shoulder. 
2008: Surgery in January to repair his rotator cuff from years of hard work. Spent much of the season rehabbing in Arizona.

Like Mark Prior, Saito has a messed-up shoulder. Unlike Prior, who was healthy in college and for his first few pro seasons, Saito been bothered by injuries from a younger age. Saito has been more present in the media over the last year or so, giving me the impression that he has at least a shot at coming back at some point, whereas Prior seems to be a bigger question mark at this point.

I don’t have special insight into whether overuse or mechanics are the root cause of Saito’s injury trouble, but I will say we’ve seen a number of NPB pitchers enjoy relatively short peaks due to overuse. Unfortunately, NPB pitch count statistics are not easy to find.

Stuff & Mechanics
Saito’s stuff begins with a fastball that, if you believe the TV gun, reaches about 94mph. His best breaking pitch is a fork/splitter that breaks straight downward, and he also mixes in a curveball and a slider.  (cue the YouTube footage) One of the better clips I found was this one of a young Saito pitching mop up in the 2000 Japan Series, striking out Hideki Matsui and Domingo Martinez. This longer video shows Saito getting swinging strikeouts with his fastball, splitter and curve.

I’m no expert on pitching mechanics, so I’ll share these two videos and see what the audience thinks. This first one is live game footage taken by a fan at a game at Chiba Marine Stadium. The second is slow motion footage of a number of pitchers, and Saito appears from 0:18-0:40. To me it looks like he doesn’t extend his throwing arm much and kind of snaps it through his motion. Of course, we don’t know what kind of changes he’ll come back with following last year’s surgery.

In Conclusion
Even 100 decent innings from Saito in 2009 would go a long way towards restoring the Hawks’ competitiveness. But whether or not he’ll be able to compete for a full season or perform at his previous level remains to be seen. Saito just turned 31, so he has some good years left, but there is a lot of wear and tear on that right shoulder.

I occasionally get asked if we’ll ever see Saito in the majors. My answer is that I kind of doubt it. Saito is 3-4 healthy years away from free agency, and the Hawks will never post him. I never say never, and he did enjoy his time in Arizona, so if he can stay healthy and has the will… maybe. But it seems like a longshot, and given that Saito’s injury history means we won’t see him in extracurriculars like WBC and US-Japan Series’, this is a guy that Stateside fans will have to enjoy via justin.tv.

The next profiles on this site will be for WBC players, so don’t touch that dial…

Coming: Ryan Vogelsong, Jon Leicester, Jose Fernandez, Naoyuki Ohmura, Fumikazu Takanami, Kento Kanazawa

Going: Tom Davey, Ramon Ortiz, John Koronka, Eric Jung, Arihito Muramatsu, Kazuhiro Kiyohara (retirement)

Staying: Tuffy Rhodes, Alex Cabrera, Greg LaRocca

Trending: marginally upward

Synopsis: Orix added two foreign players with NPB experience in Vogelsong and Fernandez, and got the better of the Ohmura – Muramatsu trade with SoftBank. On the downside, they didn’t add anyone significant to the pitching staff. Word is they’re not done adding to their foreign roster.

NPB spring training camps broke on February 1, so it’s time to dust off the old bullet points series.

Japanese Articles

• Nippon Ham’s Yu Darvish threw 125 pitches on day one of camp. Here’s a pic of him throwing lefty between workouts to relax. What is it with all these switch-pitchers lately? I guess Darvish will be prepared if his right arm falls off from overwork.
• Hanshin fireballer Kyuji Fujikawa is working on a two-seam fastball for the WBC. That would be a great addition to his arsenal.
• New Chunichi Dragons addition Tony Blanco took 95 swings in batting practice, hitting 15 over the fence. Blanco is taking Tyrone Woods’ spot on the foreign roster, but only earning 1/22nd of his salary.
• Edgardo Alfonzo is starting his spring training audition with the Yomiuri Giants’ “A group”, which contains the teams veterans. My gut feeling is that he’ll make the team.
• The Giants are also working out former Houston and Texas farmhand Levi Romero. He’s never pitched above high-a ball in America, and if he passes the audition he’ll be an instructional player.
• Nippon Ham has former Nationals farmhand Luis Jimenez in camp for a tryout as well.
• Lotte has signed former Cuban National player and US minor leaguer Juan Muiz to an instructional contract.

The news of Ken Takahashi’s minor league deal with the Blue Jays is already out there, so I’ll add a few details courtesy of the online edition of the Chugoku Shimbun.

• One-year, minor league deal with a spring training invite
• Team will provide a personal trainer/translator
• The team will evaluate him as a starter
• If he makes the major league team and meets all incentives, his salary will be about $1.5m

The deal is final once the visa paperwork goes through. If Takahashi does indeed make the team, every AL East team will have a Japanese player on it’s roster.

Coming: Micheal Nakamura, Takahito Kudoh, Dicky Gonzales, Edgardo Alfonzo (maybe), Levi Romero (maybe)

Going: Koji Uehara, Makoto Kosaka, Takayuki Shimizu, Tomohiro Nioka, Masanori Hayashi, Ken Kadokura, Shigeki Noguchi

Staying: Marc Kroon, Sung-Yeop Lee, Alex Ramirez, Seth Greisinger

Trending: upward

Synopsis: Uehara is the only guy they will notice is gone, and Nakamura will mostly balance out his loss. Strong group of foreign players will be back in 2009. Of the departures, only Hayashi is under 30.

When I was a kid, I had a subscription to Baseball Digest and read it cover to cover every month. Shukan Baseball has since superceded it as my baseball reading of choice, but I still have fond memories of the big pile of Baseball Digests that I racked up back in Illinois. 

I found out recently that the magazine is stepping into the Infomration Age this March. You can get an early start by bookmarking their boilerplate page at baseballdigest.com and also checking out their page on Facebook.

Over the next couple weeks, I’ll be taking a look at player personnel moves made by each NPB this offseason. This series will not cover draftees or impact rookies, only additions and losses of experienced players. The focus will be on foreign players, but notable Japanese players will be included as well.

Coming: John Wasdin, Takayuki Shimizu

Going: Craig Brazell, Matt Kinney

Staying: Hiram Bocachica, Alex Graman, Koji Mitsui

Trending: neutral

Synopsis: very little change for the defending Japan Champions. It was a little bit of a surprise to see Brazell go after hitting 27 homers, but he did have a weak OBP. Shimizu arrives from Yomiuri for cash and should provide some bench/DH depth.

Former Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Masumi Kuwata has been accepted to the Waseda University Sports Management Graduate Program. Before being selected first overall in the 1985 draft by the Yomiuri Giants, his desire was to attend Waseda University after his high school days at PL Gakuen.

The Daily Yomiuri has comments from Masumi: “My desire to study on Waseda University’s campus has not diminished after 23 years.”

Since his retirement, there has been much speculation on Masumi’s future in baseball. Although the most popular speculation was his future being in coaching, he stated his bigger dream.

Nikkan Sports has comments from Masumi: “I felt that I will not be able to change the baseball world by being a coach. There are people above controlling the organizations. I have a bigger dream than what people imagine.”

After his retirement from baseball as a player, he spent his time attending independent league and high school games in Japan to view a different perspective of baseball. “Being a coach is wonderful, but I also have a desire to study management and marketing. I understand the inside of the baseball world and now I want to look at the outside.”

So what is he looking forward to being on a college campus?

Comments from Nikkan Sports: “I will like to be a part of the Waseda-Keio rivalry game and enjoy the atmosphere. There should be a lot to gain from watching the student athletes on campus.”

The sports business in Japan is gradually growing; influenced by how big the industry has become across the sea in the United States. A national icon like Masumi learning the fundamentals of sports business at one of the most recognized programs might raise awareness and stimulate the growth of sports business in Japan. With my knowledge, experience, and what I see from the news, I hope to add the business side of development in Japanese baseball to this website.

I’d like to welcome NPB Tracker’s first contributing writer, Ryo Shinkawa.

Ryo is currently a senior at Baldwin-Wallace College majoring in Sports Management with a minor in Business Administration, expected to graduate in May, 2009. He is bilingual in Japanese and English and has lived in both the United States and Japan with an overseas study experience in England in his junior year. He spent the 2008 season with the Cleveland Indians as a Media Relations Intern/Interpreter and will take on a similiar role for the 2009 season. He will be looking for a full-time opportunity in professional sports after the season.

Ryo will be contributing articles on the baseball and sports management in Japan on a regular basis.

From 1994-2000, Ichiro was the undisputed best hitter in Japan. After he left for Seattle, Hideki Matsui took over as Japan’s consensus batting king. After Matsui’s reign, you’d have to go with Nobuhiko Matsunaka, until 2005 when Norichika Aoki emerged. It’s hard to argue who was better in ’05, but in 2006 Aoki took over the title and has held it ever since.

I mainly focus on pitching with this site, just because I think pitching is the more interesting part of the game (baseball is the only game where the defense controls the ball). So this will be my first of comparatively few articles devoted to hitting, and why not start at the top?

Looking Back
Not too long ago, I was thumbing through Shukan Baseball’s 2003 draft guide, and I happened across Aoki’s profile toward the back of the section for college players. Shukan Baseball graded him an ‘A’ overall, noting that he had hit .400 in two consecutive seasons, but compared him to Tatsuya Ozeki, a servicable contact-hitting outfielder with zero power. Aoki’s Waseda University teammate Takashi Toritani really viewed as the prize of the draft, and got a cover spot on that issue. Back then, the top college and industrial league players could choose which team to sign with, and Toritani chose to sign with Hanshin, while Aoki was selected in the fourth round of the draft by Yakult. By the end of 2005, it was obvious which team had the better draft. I didn’t see Aoki in college so I can’t explain why he was so underrated, but it does speak to the difficulty of drafing top amateurs. Perhaps teams were scared off by his small frame (5’8 or so).

While we’re here, other notables available in the 2003 draft included SoftBank closer Takahiro Mahara,  former-almost Red Sox farmhand Hayato Doue, Yomiuri starter Tetsuya Utsumi, Dodgers farmhand Robert Boothe, and Lotte ace Yoshihisa Naruse. Aoki’s “comparable” Ozeki is currently out of NPB work and looking to catch on with a US minor league team. 

Hitting
The lefty-hitting, center-fielding Aoki is the closest thing Japan has to another Ichiro, and WBC viewers will probably get to hear the compared quite a bit. The comparisons aren’t really off-base, as the two have pretty similar games. Comparing Aoki to a Japan-era Ichiro, both players have a long stride in their swings, but Aoki gets into more of a crouch and appears to have a more stable lower body. But judge for yourself with some obligatory YouTube footage: here’s a clip chronicling the evolution of Aoki’s swing from 2005-2007, and a homerun Ichiro hit off of a rookie Daisuke Matsuzaka in 1999. Both clips are in Japanese, but the video should speak for itself.

Aoki is a bit of a free-swinger, but he’s reduced his strikeouts and increased his slugging percentage in each year of his career. He’s also improved on his batting eye, walking about as much as he strikes out (his walk total actually surpassed his strikeouts in 2007). Another telling stat is that in 2008, 31.2% of his hits went for extra bases, up from 16.4% in his historic rookie year. Note also this improvement came while Yakult moved the fences back in their home, Jingu Stadium.

Let’s take a look at how he got his job done in 2008, courtesy of some analysis borrowed from the outstanding Data League site:

So it’s pretty clear that Aoki uses the whole field, and does well when he gets the ball into the air. I’d suggest that he can improve further as his batting eye continues to develop and he can get pitches to drive. 

And More…
Aoki was a bright spot for Japan’s disappointing 2008 Olympic team, and will take to the international stage again in this year’s WBC, where he’ll start in center alongside Ichiro. Along with Yu Darvish, he’ll probably attract the most attention of any non-MLB player on Japan’s team.

Aoki just signed for 2009 with Yakult for 260m yen ($2.86m) after four rounds of negotiations. There had been some rumblings of Yakult wanting to sign him to a 10-year deal, but so far nothing’s come of it. I wish they’d make more than a nominal attempt to do it. Aoki asked to be posted a couple years ago, and Yakult of course said “no way”, so it would be nice to see them back that up with a little commitment. Yakult basically knows they have a guy that they’ll eventually lose to MLB, but they have a nine-year headstart on his services. Let’s see how creative they can be in retaining him and building a competitive team around him.