NPB Tracker

If you missed the NPB-KBO Club Championship, you can watched a Korean broadcast archived on justin.tv here: http://www.justin.tv/wkwlxjf#from-21.00,November-13-2009.

If you don’t see any video, try tweaking the time and date at the end of the url.

In a nutshell, Yomiuri beat Kia 9-4. It was a decent game until the 7th, when Yomiuri put seven runs on the board. Yakyu Baka has a write-up of the game, so I’ll limit my comments to a few observations. And here they are

• This game failed to sell out Nagasaki’s rather small stadium. I wonder why they played in Nagasaki rather than the beautiful new stadium in Hiroshima?
• The game felt like a spring training game spiked with a competitiveness, but the Giants did play all their starters. Last year, Seibu gave their foreign players the series off and let a number of their ni-gun kids play.
• Kia’s starter, Yang Hyeon-Jong, was pretty good. He seemed to work mostly off of his breaking pitches, but seemed to have a respectable fastball, which I think he could have used more. In any event, I hope to see more.
• Taishi Ohta pinch-hit at the end of the game, but looked completely fooled by You Dong-Hoon, who was otherwise hittable.
• Wirfin Obispo is more of a “thrower” than a “pitcher”.
• Tatsunori Hara took receipt of a huge trophy for his team’s victory.
• Next year, the organizers are looking at bringing back the four-team format, and hosting the series in Taiwan. Good idea, in my opinion. I don’t think continuing to centralize this on Japan is in the best interest of Asian baseball.

The Chugoku Shimbun is reporting that the Hiroshima Carp are close to a deal to acquire Justin Huber from the Twins. According to the report, the Carp put in a request to acquire Huber, and it was accepted the same day. The two sides will begin negotiating a transfer a the start of next week. The Twins’ removal of Huber from their 40-man roster coincides with this development.

I almost included Huber in my list of 2010 NPB acquisition targets, but left him out because I thought he might get another MLB look somewhere. He’s a pretty typical 4A guy at this point: successful in 3A, frequently on 40-man rosters and occasionally on 25-man rosters. But the Twins already have a pretty good first baseman named Justin, so playing at the next level was going to take an injury or a move to another organization.