Baseball in Japan & Around the World
And the silly season begins! Yomiuri Giants catcher Shinnosuke Abe has met the service time requirements for domestic free agency. MLB fans, don’t get too excited — Abe can only move to other NPB teams. The Giants have a policy of not negotiating with players who have declared free agency, so we’ll see what happens with him. My guess is that he doesn’t go anywhere.
The 2009 Free Agents page will be going away soon. Get a good look at it before it’s replaced with the 2010 version.
Yu Darvish is approaching Ichiro status in Japan. However, this time it’s not on the baseball field, but inside classrooms. He will be featured in the new edition of an English textbook, “Earthliner 09-10”, which is mainly used in high schools in Japan. Every edition of the textbook features a different public figure who has been active internationally and Darvish will be the second baseball player used after Ichiro.
A comment from the publisher states: “Darvish is popular figure with high school kids with thier similarity in age. He has made a name for himself in international competitions such as the Olympics and the WBC.”
The Earthliner textbook selects a figure that will stimulate students’ interest in English. Two pages out of the 32 page textbook will cover his career from his play, from the Koshien National High School Tournament to his performance on the international stage. Four million copies have been sent to schools around the country already and Darvish will look not only to entertain the fans at the ballpark, but the students in the classrooms as well.
Ken Kadokura wants to continue his career with an MLB organization, and Sports Hochi is reporting that the pitcher is already reaching out to the Cardinals and Orioles. I suspect the teams he’s starting with were among those that showed interest in him during the offseason.
Couple of random thins I’ve done over the last few weeks…
The NPB season opened last night, 4/3, and I was remiss in only giving it a passing mention. Here are some highlights:
All the box scores in Japanese but I’ll have an English source for them soon. The WBC live chats were fun, I’m going to try doing that again during the season, if a) the time difference is reasonable and b) we can find a reliable live stream.
And in other brief news, yu-darvish.com is now an NPB Tracker property.
Word out of Japan is that the Cubs have released pitcher Ken Kadokura. Kadokura had appeared in six spring training games and was demoted to the minors on March 18. I don’t find this shocking but I did think he’d last longer.Â
Kadokura had an offer to join a Korean team in the offseason, but turned it down to join the Cubs. KBO foreign rosters are certainly set at this point, so that option is probably off the table for now. He also said that he had more than one MLB offer, so we’ll see if there are any takers for him.
The SoftBank Hawks have been looking to import a power hitter for quite some time now, and the guy that should be at the top of their list is freely available. Dallas McPherson was released by the Marlins on April 1 after clearing waivers and failing to attract a trade partner. Takeuchi-COO, if you’re reading this, sign McPherson and pencil him in at 3rd base.
NPB has launched an English version of it’s homepage. With opportunities increasing for Japanese players to compete on international stages such as the Olympics and the WBC, the demadn for an English resource for the league had been mounting.
There’s nothing fancy on the website yet, but the launch of an English page is a step toward the right direction for NPB. Individual team rosters, stats, schedules, brief history and the stadium information is listed so far. Also the roster for the WBC Japanese team can be seen as well.
Surprising news out of Japan today — apparently the Marlins are close to a deal that would land them Yu Darvish. The Marlins’ management team has found a way to work around the posting system –Â offering Darvish’s current team, the Nippon Ham Fighters, an ownership stake in the team. Â Nippon Ham has granted the Marlins an exclusive negotiating window with Darvish and if they can agree to terms, the Nippon Ham will release him and take over their reportedly significant share of the Marlins franchise.
A person familiar with the negotiations was quoted as saying, “it’s the beginning of April and the Marlins almost fooled themselves that they were ready to compete with the Phillies and Mets with the roster they have. Getting Darvish should push them over the top.” Added Japanese analyst Shigatsu Jodan, “this gives the company the opportunity to keep Darvish in the Nippon Ham family and should open up a great new market in south Florida for the company’s ham, pork and bacon products.” Darvish’s agent Aberilu Furu issued a firm “no comment”.
I certainly didn’t see this one coming.
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