NPB Bullet Points: News & Retirements
(insert witty introduction here)
Around NPB
- Chihiro Kaneko has gotten himself in to the mix for the Pacific League’s wins title, with a career-best personal 10-game winning streak. Kaneko is now 14-7 on the season. He also has six shutouts.
- The Giants have slumped to sub-.500 records in each of the last two months, and it’s showing on Tatsunori Hara’s face.
- Craig Brazell cranked out his 40th bomb of the season the other day, becoming the first Hanshin foreigner to since Randy Bass back in ’86.
- Orix righty Kazuki Kondo pitched a 144-pitch complete game loss on the 1st… and then got sent down. I didn’t see the game, but it must have been a save-the-bullpen kind of effort, as Kondo had allowed seven runs by the third inning.
- Nippon Ham lefty Masaru Takeda has a personal seven-game winning streak going, and leads the Fighters with 12 wins.
- Rakuten ace Masahiro Tanaka is out a minimum of three weeks with a torn pectoral muscle, and with Rakuten languishing in last place, it’s looking unlikely that he’ll pitch again this year.
- At least one MLB club was seen watching lefty Daiki Uekida’s September 2 outing for Tokyo Gas of the Industrial Leagues. I haven’t seen Uekida but at first glance he looks like a Hisanori Takahashi type.
- Today’s Japanese word: moudasho (mo-da-sho, 猛打賞), which means three hits in one game. An example: Lotte shortstop Tsuyoshi Nishioka has 22 moudasho games this season, a club record. Ichiro, of course, holds the NPB record with 26. With 21 team games left in the season, Nishioka has a shot at Ichiro’s record if he gets hot.
Player Personnel
- Yakult is looking into re-acquiring Akinori Iwamura. Pittsburgh is set to move on from Aki after this season, and I believe Yakult still controls his NPB rights.
- Longtime Hanshin catcher Akihiro Yano is calling it a career at the end of the season. Something of a late-bloomer, Yano made seven All-Star appearances in his 20-year career and was the runner-up for the 2003 MVP.
- Orix ni-gun infielder Masahiro Nagata has already retired, according to a team announcement from August 31. Nagata was once a pretty decent prospect, but never made an impact at the top level.
- Cuban pitcher Pedro Lazo is also retiring. I was planning on listing him as a dark horse to move to Japan next season, as Omar Linares and Orestes Kindelan did at the end of their careers.
03/09/2010 at 12:19 am Permalink
Were you already in Japan when Nagata was drafted? That was before Seibu was hand-picked for the behind-the-scene money scandal.
But the question is why now, not at the end of the season.
I even picked up gossip magazines after Oze’s incident for any kind of information.
Will the NPB step in if the first rounder picked by Orix declines this year?
End of my stream-of-consciousness comment.
05/09/2010 at 12:25 am Permalink
I know I usually grow annoyed with the Darvish to MLB line, I’ve read that Baltimore wants to get a look at Darvish. Is there any kind of thing mentioning this in the Japanese sport dailies, lately, or is this what I think it is by the media, speculation?
05/09/2010 at 8:49 am Permalink
The Japanese papers said that the Orioles had someone at Darvish’s start on Saturday. It might be Stocksill if he’s still there.
05/09/2010 at 12:50 pm Permalink
I see, its probably is Stockstill if he’s still there, I dont think the Orioles have a full time Asian scout, though I might be wrong. Thanks for the confirmation though.
On other more related news, its interesting how great Brazell has been this time around with 40 home runs, 101 RBIs, and his .306 average. I see he’s struck out the same amount, but he must be putting a higher amount of balls in play.
06/09/2010 at 7:44 am Permalink
I can confirm there were still a whole bunch of scouts at Chiba Marine on Sunday, but I don’t know who they were. I think I’d recognize Stockstill if I saw him, but just because I didn’t see him doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.
I wasn’t there Saturday, though. Somehow Darvish always manages to pitch in the games I can’t make it to (which doesn’t actually bother me all that much).
And of course, maybe they were all there to watch Hiroyuki Kobayashi 🙂
06/09/2010 at 10:32 am Permalink
And of course, maybe they were all there to watch Hiroyuki Kobayashi 🙂
Actually that’s probably true.
06/09/2010 at 10:49 am Permalink
Yeah, Kobayashi does seem like a target the Orioles would be interested in, so I dont doubt that Stockstill was watching him either, I heard they were supposed to watch a few players this trip, but with his incling free agency it is more likely there looking at him. Baltimore badly needs bullpen help, though I dont know if he interested in that, though there young rotation besides Guthrie and Matsuz is unproven too.