NPB Bullet Points
Japanese
- Yokohama dai-veteran Kimiyasu Kudoh was assessed with the first ever ball called due to the 15-second rule. He got hit with the call while shaking off signs in the 7th inning of Yokohama’s 10-3 loss to the Giants on the 18th.
- Kudoh’s fellow geezer Hideki Irabu has made his first appearance for Kochi, throwing one inning in a practice game against Shikoku Bank. Gen relays a report that Yokohama might kick the tires on Irabu this offseason.
- The Hiroshima Carp are holding a tryout on September 19 at Mazda Stadium. To qualify you must be between ages 17 and 24 and be at least 175cm (5’8) tall.
- Hiroki Kuroda is playing catch again after his horrific accident. He joked, “I’m glad I didn’t forget how to throw”, though he is still experiencing headaches.
English
- If you haven’t seen the Goro Shigeno Koko Yakyu blog, you should check it out — its easily the best way to follow the Koshien tournament in English.
- Bloomberg ran a story on Yusei Kikuchi.
- Tsuyoshi Wada is looking to return to SoftBank some time in September.
- Brandon Siefken breaks down some of the hardest working starters in Japan.
- This isn’t baseball related but it illustrates the differences between Japanese and English as well as the challenges of machine translation.
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22/08/2009 at 12:55 am Permalink
THEME: Brandon Siefken and his site
Patrick,
Remember I said I didn’t very much enjoyed baseball posts about money, economics, “too professional”?, etc.
But I hasn’t finished my point then.
The expression I sometimes get, that the main underlying reason for such kind of blogs, posts, sites is to SELL HIMSELF.
Most often, sell himself to a major league organization.
Often people go as far as provide insane amounts of data, graphs, numbers, whatever … just to showcase themselves.
Actually, one does need to showcase himself sometimes, but not at the expense of quality of his material.
Too often, all these data, graphs, numbers, whatever are completely USELESS by itself.
And here’s just another example – Brandon Siefken and his “Video Scout – Pitch-by-pitch Yu Darvish vs. Yakult Swallows May 23, 2009”
Check out his bio – LOL
http://baseball81.com/bio.html
==
Brandon is the author of … “Video Scout – Yu Darvish Pitch-Plot of Three 2009 Games, 315 Pitches.”
Brandon has developed Pitch-Plot, a tool used to project a 3D strike zone on a computer screen to allow accurate video scouting and pitch-plotting of pitch velocity and location.
==
Jeez, “author of Video Scout – Yu Darvish Pitch-Plot of Three 2009 Games, 315 Pitches.”
Ouch, author of this useless XYZ?
Three games? Scouting?
Citation:
“Intangibles: After every pitch,he makes overly animated facial expressions in reaction to the pitch.Good or bad,each time a pitch is called or hit,Darvish will make a strange face to show his pleasure or displeasure.Usually when making these faces he is half laughing or sticking out his toungue.”
Come on!
22/08/2009 at 2:33 am Permalink
Oops, forgot about one more “underlying reason”.
To feed one’s feel of intellectual superiority to others.
Ever heard of that MGL guy?
Intellectual superiority to all players, all managers, all fans, just everybody in baseball.
Endless calling most everybody idiots, stupid …
Feel free to think what you want and talk whatever you think in your kitchen
But persist by publishing it online day in and day out?
Unfortunatelly, that way of thinking has been too familiar to me as well :(((
But at least I kind of realized it at some point, and try to fight within myself.
Not sure that very successfully …
24/08/2009 at 4:01 pm Permalink
I am surprised Kudo was the first pitcher to be nailed by the 15-second rule. I would have thought he would be rushing to finish the inning as quickly as possible so that he could get back to the clubhouse for a cigarette.