NPB Tracker

Update: For the March 19 game, please click here.

Update: Very touch ‘n go schedule for me tonight. We’ll start now 8:00pm, but I’ll be interrupted.

We’ll do another live chat for tonight’s WBC game. Should be a good one — another rematch of the 2006 final, only this time the loser goes home. Hisashi Iwakuma takes the hill for Japan, while Yuneski Maya goes for Cuba. Tonight’s game will be on ESPN2 in my area, so I don’t anticipate messing around with justin.tv tonight.

It took a while to find a way to actually watch the game here in the States, but I finally did.

About the game…

• Jung Bong shut Japan down again, indicating that his round one performance was no fluke.
• Yu Darvish was better than the final line makes him look. He was done in in the first (from what I saw of the highlights) by a couple of a couple of booted infield grounders and a weak throw from Norichika Aoki.
• After the first inning, Korea didn’t do much of anything until the eighth, when they let Japan’s pitchers beat themselves with walks.
• Japan got runners on base and generally made contact, but they didn’t get any extra-base hits and didn’t really play the small-ball game. I think that’s what cost them the win more than anything.
• Akinori Iwamura looked like he had no chance against Chang Yang Lim in the last at-bat of the game.
• I wasn’t crazy about Korea planting their flag on the mound at the end. They didn’t win the tournament.

Hindsight is 20/20…

• Tatsunori Hara had the infield positioned for a play at the plate when Korea had the bases loaded in the first. If they had been a double-play depth they would have gotten at least one out on Jin-young Lee’s grounder went for a two-run single.
• I would rather start Munenori Kawasaki than Yasuyuki Kataoka if Hiroyuki Nakajima can’t play, especially since Kataoka is out of position at shortstop.
• What was the point of putting Yoshiyuki Ishihara in for Kenji Johjima, just to pinch hit for him with Shinnosuke Abe after an inning? Johjima got ejected — shame on me for watching with the sound off.
• Minoru Iwata didn’t look sharp — and leaving him in to face the righty looked really bad when Masahiro Tanaka came in and blew the next guy away.

On the live chat…

• The chat thing was a spur-of-the-moment idea, so I didn’t give much notice. If I try this again, I’ll give more notice and hopefully I’ll get to chat with a few of the regulars.
• The chat was pretty well-trafficed, mostly because it wound up near the top of the Google rankings for several variations on “wbc japan korea live”. A lot of people found this site for the first time because of that, and I hope some of them will stick around.
• It took some time to find a good video feed, but I think at least a couple people were able to follow along.
• Some of the comments I got on the chat tested my patience — though the people causing the problems clearly weren’t frequent visitors to this site. I hope everyone will be cool next time we do this.
• I think it was insane for ESPN to show the NIT tournament instead of this.