2010 Pacific League Opener

» 20 March 2010 » In npb »

It took some time to find a working video feed, and the live chat idea didn’t really work out, but we had baseball yesterday.

Amazingly, my data collecting and parsing programs still work with this year’s sites. I need to do some usability work to make the 2010 data easier to find, but it’s all there. Here are the charts for this year’s opening day starters:

Kaneko had the best outing with his four-hit shutout, but the game I spent the most time watching was Nippon Ham vs SoftBank. Some thoughts on the game:

  • Darvish scrapped that pause at the top of his delivery, and was overall quicker to the plate than last year.
  • Darvish also seemed like he was trying to strike everyone out, and went the distance throwing 147 pitches. He struck out 13.
  • Sugiuchi was not sharp with his command, especially up in the zone.
  • Every year I wonder if Hiroki Kokubo has anything left, but he looked great yesterday. He had a great at-bat against Darvish in the 5th, resulting in an rbi double, and saved a run in the field with a diving play down the 1st base line.
  • Sho Nakata‘s plate discipline was put to the test in the 6th when he came up with runners on 2nd and 3rd. I thought Sugiuchi had a pretty big advantage in that situation, and Nakata did chase a couple of pitches out of the zone, but Nakata worked the count full and then hit a single off a hanging breaking ball.

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  1. Patrick
    passerby
    20/03/2010 at 12:55 pm Permalink

    Have you heard about Pa-League Live TV?
    http://pa.tv-live.jp/isp/yahoo/
    I think it’s no good overseas, but just for you info.

  2. Patrick
    Patrick
    20/03/2010 at 5:03 pm Permalink

    Thanks. The Nippon Ham-SoftBank highlight video works, but the other two don’t. We’ll see if the live links work tonight, but I’m kind of doubting it. There are always proxy servers though.

  3. Patrick
    Marc
    20/03/2010 at 8:41 pm Permalink

    Is that program going to cost money later in the season?

  4. Patrick
    Andre
    20/03/2010 at 9:26 pm Permalink

    Yeah, its free for the opening series. It works overseas (i’m in Canada), but its pay for the regular season. As far as I can understand, its Â¥980 a month to subscribe to a single team, but it does not include postseason or all-star game. Access to all teams, including postseason and all-star game is Â¥1480 a month. You can also buy single game access for Â¥380.

    http://pa.tv-live.jp/isp/yahoo/plan.php

    The sale site seems to close during the games, or maybe thats just to prevent people from trying to buy single game access to free games.