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Hiroki Kuroda will not be wearing a Dodgers uniform on opening day 2012. I don’t have any special insight into where he might wind up, but I do have a couple of quotes from Kuroda and his agent to pass along.

Here’s a one from Kuroda that appeared in Sponichi on December 30th:

“It’s an important offseason in that I’m taking another look at my life in baseball. I’d like to take as much time as is permissible and carefully make a decision.”

 

「野球人生を見つめ直す意味で大事なオフ。時間の許す限り、じっくり決断を下したい」

And the second is from agent Steve Hilliard, and appeared in Sponichi the previous day:

“We’re steadily getting closer to decision time.”

 

「（去就）決断の時期は着々と近づいている」

 

“Currently he’s carefully considering all his options, including Hiroshima and MLB teams, but it’s a very difficult decision.”

 

「彼は現在、広島とメジャー球団、全ての選択肢を検討し熟考している段階だが、とても難しい決断になっている」

The quotes from Hilliard are translations of translations, and I couldn’t find the original quotes published in English, so we’ll have to live with them for now.

The other day, Scot Drucker tweeted that Orlando Roman signed with a Japanese team. On the same day, Daily Sports reported that Yakult was looking into signing Roman, so, putting two and two together… I’ll surmise that Roman has signed with Yakult.

I’ll admit that I had never heard of Roman prior to Drucker’s tweet, but his b-ref page indicates that he’s a hard working minor league veteran, a 31st-round draft pick who reached 3A at age 27, and has played in Mexico and in Taiwan with the Brother Elephants in recent years. It’s always nice to see  hard work pay off for this type of player, and I hope he does well in Japan.