NPB Tracker

Lots of Koji Uehara on this site recently, not much Kenshin Kawakami. Let’s do something about that.

Kawakami is in camp with the Braves and has been working on adapting to the MLB ball. According to Sponichi, he threw 37 pitches in his most recent bullpen season, working in his cutter and curveball. This is a contrast to his approach in Japan, where he would only throw curves and fastballs until just before opening day.

Kawakami seems like he has a little work ahead of him in getting used to the MLB ball. The righty was quoted as saying  “suddenly throwing all these breaking pitches, well, there was some unease…” before adding, “I didn’t get comfortable with my breaking pitches. I want to talk to the pitching coach and come up with a solution that works for me”.

David Ross, who caught Kawakami’s bullpen session, said that Kawakami’s curveball reminded him of his former Dodgers teammate, Kazuhisa Ishii.

Add Yuji Yoshioka to the list of former NPB’ers aiming to catch on in the US. Sanspo is reporting that Yoshioka has hired Ray Pointevint as his agent and departed for LA to work out. Yoshioka, 37, was released by Rakuten after last season, and was passed over by all the NPB teams after his November tryout. He was a key guy in Kintetsu’s fun 2001 team, but hasn’t done much since the early part of the decade.

Yoshioka is also open to a move to Korea or Taiwan.

Former Seibu Lion, Yokohama BayStar, and Yomiuri Giant Tatsuya Ozeki has gotten himself an audition with the Colorado Rockies. The tryout will take place in the beginning of March, which leads me to believe it will be held in the Rocks’ minor league camp.

This is Ozeki’s second attempt to land with an MLB organization. He had a minor league deal with Milwaukee in 2006, but it was voided over visa allotment issues. Ozeki is 32 year-old lefty outfielder coming off a .215 BA season for Yokohama. If he does get a contract he’s likely to be an organizational player.

This offseason, we’ve seen a large number of released NPB players announce an intent to pursue contracts with MLB organizations. I’m not sure if this is a record, but it’s the most I can recall. I’m not including Junichi Tazawa and Ken Takahashi in this list, because Takahashi turned down NPB offers, and Tazawa would have been drafted. All of these guys were either released by their NPB teams, or in the case of Yamarin, not drafted.

• Shigeki Noguchi -> agreed with Blue Jays, failed physical
• Ken Kadokura -> Cubs
• Kazuhiro Takeoka -> Unsigned (Braves?)
• Katsuhiko Maekawa -> Cardinals
• Takateru Iyono -> Unsigned
• Tatsuya Ozeki -> trying out with the Rockies in March
• Ryohei Tanaka -> Orioles
• Michinao Yamamura -> Unsigned (Golden League?)
• Koichi Misawa -> Unsigned (played in the Northern League in ’08)
• Yoshinori Yamarin -> Braves
• Itsuki Shoda -> Sinon Bulls (Taiwan)

Five Players are still unsigned, which doesn’t surprise me, but I can see Yamamura and Iyono getting a shot as they’re still in their 20’s. Takeoka has worked out twice for the Braves and played AAA ball, so he might a chance too.

Notable MLB returnees:

• Jeremy Powell -> Pirates
• Jason Standridge -> Marlins
• Craig Brazell -> Orioles
• Winston Abreu -> Rays

Without a doubt, all of the players listed above obvious face big uphill battles to making it to the majors. But the fact that they are getting a chance indicates either a heightened respect for the level of talent in Japan, or a greater need to find low-cost, low-risk players through non-traditional channels. There will be 22 Japanese players in 14 big league camps this spring.

Reasons not to write these guys off just yet: Tomo Ohka, Takashi Saito, Hector Carrasco, Buddy Carlyle, Brian Shouse and  Pedro Feliciano. Saito looked like he was on the downside of his career when he came over, and none of the other guys had lasting success at the top level in Japan. All have been at least useful MLB players.

Quick notes about Koji Uehara — he’ll make his spring debut on Feb 27 vs the Marlins, and his regular season debut on April 8 at home against the Yankees. Uehara opens the season as the Orioles’ #2 starter behind Jeremy Guthrie (who as it happens, has a Japanese-American mom).

Shigeki Noguchi’s agreed-upon contract with the Blue Jays will not be completed. According to Sports Hochi, Noguchi’s physical turned up irregularities in his left (throwing) elbow, and he’s already returned to Japan. Noguchi had been training in Florida in advance of the Blue Jays’ minor league camp opening.

Noguchi wants to continue his career, but said earlier in the offseason that he’d retire if he didn’t get a chance to pitch in the US or Japan. Noguchi failed an audition with Rakuten last autumn.

Two WBC-related videos to pass along… the first is Rakuten pitcher Masahiro Tanaka taking on Ichiro. Tanaka gets the better of him with a battery of breaking pitches.

And here’s a video of the whole team working out. The most notable thing about this clip is that there were, according to reports, over 40,000 people on hand to greet the team. I doubt that 40k people made it in to the stadium, but you can see that the whole infield lower deck and the rightfield bleachers are full. Keep in mind this is workout and not an actual game.

Also, here is a collection of pics from Sanspo.

After slumping to a surprising 6th-place finish in the Pacific League last year, the SoftBank Hawks went into the offseason looking to acquire some offense, but only came away with Chris Aguila, who himself admits to being more of a gap hitter. It had been reported that the Hawks were after Nelson Cruz and Eric Hinske, but Cruz couldn’t be pried away from Texas and Hinske signed with Pittsburgh.

The Hawks haven’t given up on finding a power hitter for the 2009 season. They’re now targetting guys who are now in camp with MLB teams, but fall off active rosters as the teams head North. Team COO Takeuchi says, “even for the same player, the salary is many times different after being dropped from the majors. We’ve reached out but haven’t had any concrete financial discussions yet”. They have a list, but no names are public yet.

Of course, I should point out that Manny Ramirez is still unsigned, and Barry Bonds hasn’t “officially” retired yet.

A look on the seven NPB players who qualified and elected to file for free agency after 2008, where I predicted them signing and where they actually signed.

Koji Uehara (P, Yomiuri Giants): Signed with Baltimore; I predicted St. Louis.

Kenshin Kawakami (P, Chunichi Dragons): Signed with Atlanta, which is where I predicted.

Ken Takahashi (P, HIroshima Carp): Signed a minor league deal with Toronto; I predicted a major league deal with the Mets. 

Ryoji Aikawa (C,  Yokohama BayStars):  Signed with Yakult; I suggested that he might get a minor league deal with Detroit. I thought I predicted Rakuten as an NPB destination but I can’t find that now.

Daisuki Miura (P, Yokohama BayStars): Stayed with Yokohama; I predicted he’d sign with Hanshin.

Toshihiro Noguchi (C, Hanshin Tigers): Signed with Yokohama, which is where I predicted.

Norihiro Nakamura (3B, Chunichi Dragons): Signed with Rakuten, which is where I predicted.

So I got 3/7. Not too bad. The last two were pretty poorly kept secrets though, so it’s more like 1/5.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about Junichi Tazawa, for a reason. This site was basically Tazawa Central in October and November, and I was pretty thrilled when he signed with Boston. Not because I cared about where he signed, but because I was happy that the frenzy was over and I could move on to writing about something else.

But still, this is an interesting story, and perhaps a precedent-setting one. We’ve already seen NPB make a rule change in response to this, and I think we’ll see a lot more MLB teams scouting the Industrial League tournaments this year, looking for the next Tazawa. And rules aside, I expect Tazawa’s performance to be influential — if he does well, I think we’ll see more try to follow in his footsteps. If he’s a flop, that will probably be a better deterrent for potential defectors than NPB could come up with.

So what can we reasonably expect from Tazawa?

Here are his 2009 tournament stats, courtesy of Draft Report:

So Tazawa was dominating his Industrial League competition. Let’s put some context around that though. The highest profile Industrial League games are all short-term tournaments, rather than league games like we’re used to in professional leages.

In the last tournament of the 2008 Industrial season, the Japan Players Championship, Tazawa pitched 20 1/3 innings without allowing an earned run, with a 15/2 K/BB ratio. In that tournament though, pitchers averaged a 2.28 ERA, 5.38 K rate, and 2.64 BB rate. Similar situation in the Intercity Championship, where Tazawa posted a 1.27/11.44/1.91 line (ERA/K rate/BB rate) vs a 2.72/6.37/3.15 tournament average.

Tazawa’s performance was clearly above average, but he did play in a pitcher-friendly series. In America, he will have to adjust to the reality that even in 2A there will be guys capable of hitting his best stuff. This will challenge him to improve on his approach on the mound and preparation for the game.

The largest Industrial League tournaments in Japan have 32 teams, so the winning team plays five games. These are single-elimination tournaments that last a week or two, so do the math on how much and how often the best guys pitch. Looking at last year’s Intercity Championship, which Tazawa’s Eneos won, Tazawa started on Sept 1, Sept 4, pitched relief on Sept 6, started again on Sept 8, and finally closed out the tourney with two innings on Sept 9. That was a total of 28.1 innings in nine days, with no more than three days rest in between apparances. I don’t have pitch count data, but I recall reading that he had gotten around 150 in one game last year (not sure if it was this tournament or another one). And he did wear out down the stretch — in his last appearance he didn’t allow any runs, but was nicked for 7 hits in 2 innings.

The upside here is that the Red Sox certainly won’t put this kind of strain on Tazawa’s arm. He’ll be put under pitch counts and watched carefully. The adjustment he’ll have to make is pitching on a regular, routine basis, instead of the short, extreme bursts of activity with long breaks in between.

There isn’t any defined way to equate performance in a Japanese amateur league to the professional American minor leagues, but there are numbers and context. In a future post, I’ll take a look at how other Industrial Leaguers have acclimatized to the pro game in Japan.