NPB Tracker

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 Shukan Baseball has since superceded it as my baseball reading of choice, but I still have fond memories of the big pile of Baseball Digests that I racked up back in Illinois.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.