NPB Tracker

Sports Hochi has an update on the Tsuyoshi Nishioka posting from the GM meetings. Here are the key points:

• The Orioles will bid on Nishioka.
• The Mariners and Padres are taking a serious look at bidding. Hochi makes it sound like they will both bid.
• The Giants are not going to bid.
• The Diamondbacks find the budget required for posting problematic.
• There are at least some who think Nishioka can stick at shortstop.

The idea that the Chiba Lotte Marines would post Tsuyoshi Nishioka has been a bit of a head scratcher for me. I get why Nishioka would want to be posted, but it makes little sense for the Marines, as he’s coming off a big year, has three years left before free agency, and doesn’t project to command a huge posting bounty. And just as a general observation, postings are talked about a lot more often than they actually happen.

Then I read yesterday in Sanspo that Lotte made a conditional agreement last offseason to allow Nishioka to move to MLB. Sanspo didn’t offer any hints as to what those conditions might be, but it’s pretty likely that they were met, as Lotte won the Japan Series, and Nishioka had the best year of his career by nearly every measure. If Sanspo’s report is accurate, it would explain why the first news reports of the Nishioka posting were seemingly sourced from Lotte’s front office. It would also make a Nishioka posting a lot more likely. Another interesting point is that Nishioka was apparently moved to tears by the fans chanting his name in the 9th inning of Saturday’s Japan-Korea Club Championship.

The Sanspo report says that Lotte and Nishioka plan on coming to a resolution by the 17th (JST), so it won’t be long before we know one way or another.

So I’ve already tweeted, the bidding portion of Hisashi Iwakuma’s posting process has come to a conclusion. All that’s been reported so far is that more than one team submitted a bid, but the rumor is that the Mariners put in $13m.

Rakuten has until the 11th to decide whether or not to accept the bid, but I doubt it will take them that long to announce their decision. My guess is that they had already decided how much they are willing to accept, and will make an announcement within a day or two of the Japan Series ending. Early on in this process Rakuten had suggested they wouldn’t accept a bid that was too low. Nikkan Sports had speculated that Rakuten would want 1.5bn yen, which I mistakenly tweeted as Rakuten hoping for $16-17m. Lazy Twitter reporting at its finest; this was Nikkan Sports’ own speculation, and 1.5bn yen is actually about $18.5m at today’s rate.

I’ve been following Ken Rosenthal’s updates on Iwakuma, and he has the Mariners, Rangers and A’s in on the bidding.Seattle’s involvement has been widely reported, and the Rangers’ bid comes as no surprise to me. Texas employs Pacific scout Jim Colborn, and has been in on most of the big pitchers to come out of Japan, including Daisuke Matsuzaka, Junichi Tazawa, and Yusei Kikuchi (though Kikuchi ultimately stayed home). Oakland makes sense as they have Ben Sheets and Eric Chavez coming off the books, and Iwakuma would do well in the Colliseum. And although this isn’t exactly corroborated information, I’ll add that Iwakuma’s agent Don Nomura tweeted that he dreamed that the Diamondbacks on November 4th.

For everything else on Iwakuma, I’ll refer back to my FanGraphs post on him from last month.

I’ve been deliberately waiting to weigh in on the Yu Darvish rumors until information from credible, on-the-record sources emerges. With the exception of Nippon Ham manager Masataka Nashida saying that he wanted to keep Darvish, we have only had reports citing anonymous “persons familiar with the situation”.

Until now. Darvish himself has come out and addressed the rumors on his blog. I’ve translated the post in its entirety below:

Things are being said about the Majors.

I’ve received a lot of comments on my blog and Twitter, but I don’t know if everyone’s predictions are on the mark or what.

Next year…

I’ll be wearing a Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters uniform.

And here’s the original Japanese. I don’t think Darvish will mind me publishing it here.

メジャーどうこう言われています。

ブログやTwitterにもたくさんのコメント頂きましたが、皆さんの予想が合ってるかどうかわかりませんが。

来年は…

北海道日本ハムファイターズのユニフォーム着ていますよ(^^)

So there we have it. Those rumors will have to wait for another offseason.

The season’s not over yet, but the offseason starts early for the B-class (bottom three) finishers. For the first time in five years, one of them is the Nippon Ham Fighters, and a few moves have been announced.

• Righty reliever Yoshinori Tateyama is planning to exercise his right to global free agency this offseason and make a move to MLB. I don’t think I’ve seen him pitch (if I have, he didn’t leave much of an impression), but he’ll be 35 on December 26, and had a 1.80, 59 strikeouts and 11 walks in 55 innings this year. He throws from a low three-quarters position, and is primarily a fastball/slider pitcher.
• The Fighters released 36-year old outfielder Tomoya Tsuboi and offered him a coaching job, but he wants to continue playing. Tsuboi has had a pretty good career, and could still possibly be a useful bench outfielder somewhere (Hiroshima?). Speculation is that he could look to the US minor or indy leagues if he doesn’t get an offer in Japan.
• Ham has also cut Kazuhito Tadano loose. The latest news is that Yokohama is looking at picking him up. Tadano has struggled over the last two seasons, but Yokoyama’s pitching needs are such that a flyer on Tadano sounds like a pretty good idea. If he does wind up with the ‘Stars, it’ll be something of a return full circle, as the team was set to acquire out of college through the 2002 draft, before backing out due to well-publicized issues.
• Surprisingly enough, Hichori Morimoto is reportedly looking into his free agency options, specifically with other NPB teams. Morimoto is the quintessential small-ball player, and could be particularly useful in the DH-free Central League… but I have a hard time seeing him play anywhere but Hokkaido. It’s just speculation at this point so it’s only potential turnover.

Okay, time to hit the “play” button again. Here’s a recap of many of the notable events that happened while I was away.

• SoftBank took the Pacific League title despite ultimately winning two fewer games than Seibu. Ties to the rescue! SoftBank tied five games to Seibu’s one, which was enough to put them a few win percentage points ahead.
• Chunichi has also clinched the Central League crown. It was a come-from-behind year for the Dragons, as they trailed Yomiuri and Hanshin for most of the season before getting hot at the right time in September while their rivals slumped. Hanshin and Yomiuri are not finished with their schedules, and could both still catch up on wins, but not eclipse Chunichi’s winning percentage.
• Prior to 2010, only three NPB players had reached 200 hits in a season: Ichiro (210 in 1994), Norichika Aoki (202 in 2005) and Alex Ramirez (204 in 2007). This year, we can add three more to the list: Lotte’s Tsuyoshi Nishioka with 204, Hanshin’s Matt Murton with 209, and Yakult’s Aoki with 204. Both Murton and Aoki both have games remaining and are poised to surpass Ichiro’s mark, although Ichiro got his 210 hits in 130 games while Murton and Aoki get 144. Media coverage of the record chase has been predictably biased towards Aoki, kind of like “Aoki has five games to get six hits to match Ichiro! Oh by the way, Murton only needs one hit and has more games to play.” Oh well, at least Murton’s not getting walked.
• Nishioka beat Ichiro’s record for more modasho (three hits or more) games, with 27. Ichiro’s mark of 26 came in that magical 1994 season.
• Another record this season is Chunichi middle reliver Takuya Asao’s astonishing 59 hold points (hold points = holds + relief wins). Asao figured in 59 of Chunichi’s 79 wins.
• This just in — Murton has tied Ichiro’s record with a single against Hiroshima.
• Rakuten manager Marty Brown attempted and failed to dig up second base in an argument with an umpire on September 23. Later in the week, Rakuten sent him packing, a year before his contract expired. The Eagles struggled to a last place, 62-79-3 finish this year, mostly due to an anemic offense.
• The Yokohama BayStars are for sale. Hama’s current parent company, TBS Holdings, is in negotiations with a couple of potential buyers and the current leading candidate appears to be the Juseikatsu Group, a holdings company that owns numerous suppliers of household goods. There was some speculation that the team could move or be contract, but the current TBS management has come out and said that won’t happen. Once upon a time, Bobby Valentine was linked to a group that tried to purchase the BayStars. I wouldn’t mind seeing that idea revisited.
• The “Yu Darvish to be posted” have spun out of control over the last couple weeks. I haven’t seen anything other than speculation and quotes from anonymous sources though. I’m still skeptical on him being posted this offseason, though as it makes no sense for Nippon Ham competitively and little sense economically. Very much in wait and see mode here.
• On the other hand, I think Hisashi Iwakuma will be posted this offseason. He’s a free agent after 2011, so Rakuten is going to lose him anyway.
• Yomiuri signed that “mystery Domican player” on September 27. His name turns out to be Noel Urena, he’s 21 and plays catcher and infield, though Yomiuri is having him work at third base.
• The Yankees signed former Yokohama BayStar Naoya Okamoto to a minor league contract. Okamoto had spent the 2010 season in Mexico.

I’ve spent most of my writing time this week over at FanGraphs, profiling some of Japan’s better players. In researching that set of articles, I came across this post I wrote in early 2009, before Koji Uehara and Kenshin Kawakami had signed with MLB clubs. Looking back at this, I don’t think I’d change the set of conclusions that I originally drew, but I will add the observation that this trend has hurt the overall depth of the league. Another interesting thing to note is that 11 of the 26 players listed here have returned to NPB, several since this article was written: Johjima, Iguchi, Kobayashi, Yabuta, Taguchi, Yabu and Fukumori.

Time to close out this series with some conclusions. I fear that I may be oversimplifying this a bit, but I’m looking for macro trends with this. These are casual observations, I didn’t do any hard research.

Check the three previous installments here: 1, 2, 3.

1. Most of the teams that lost a star to MLB took some kind of a hit in the standings. With the exception of Hiroshima, the teams losing the top 10 players listed below took years to replace the production they lost, and some still haven’t. It’s also important to remember that none of these departures happened in a vacuum; there were other things that affected the performance of each team, but overall the lose of these players has hurt their former teams competitively.

2. The only team that really took a popularity hit after losing a star to MLB was the Giants after losing Matsui. I bought walk-up tickets to a Giants game in 2005, which would have been unthinkable a few years earlier. Of course, while the Giants were down, the Tigers and Dragons were both up and have enjoyed competitive success and popularity since the early part of the decade. SoftBank has been less competitive since losing Johjima, but has not suffered at the gate. The team is actually adding 6000 seats to the Yahoo Dome for next season to help meet demand.

3. Signing foreign talent to replace departed stars doesn’t seem to work. Teams will often sign foreign players to fill the holes left by departed stars, but when the do so, they’re losing the opportunity to add depth at other positions with those roster spots. I can’t think of an example where a foreign star was a long-term replacement for an MLB bound star. Colby Lewis was great as Hiroki Kuroda’s replacement in 2008, but so was Kevin Hodges a few years ago and he flamed out after a single season.

4. Losing talent to MLB has a trickle-down impact on the smaller market teams. As an example, Hanshin may have been content with their outfield had Shinjo stuck around, but two years after he left they signed Tomoaki Kanemoto away from the Carp to play left field. Kanemoto has gone on to become a legend for the Tigers while the Carp have only recently begun to show signs of life. Hanshin and Yomiuri can spend to fill their holes, while smaller market teams like Hiroshima cannot.

5. On the positive side, stars moving to MLB has opened up (or could potentially open) spots for younger players, in a league where there is no rule 5 draft and blocked prospects and depth guys are seldom traded. We haven’t seen too many cases of prospects jumping in and filling the shoes of the top 10 guys I’ve listed below, but others have stepped in for 11-26.

Overall, I don’t think this trend is killing NPB. Attendance is stable, and Japan Series television ratings were up this year (mostly because the Giants played in it). Many of the players who have made the leap to MLB have actually been pretty successful, which has greatly improved the credibility of NPB overseas. On the downside, the loss of star players has hurt the competitive depth of the affected teams, and led many to question the viability of the league. I seeing the loss of these star players as an “Oakland A’s-ing” of the league — the A’s have gotten by with smart management, an ability to exploit market inefficiencies and a willingness to continually reinvent the team on the field. The A’s style doesn’t translate to the Japanese game completely, but the underlying principles of thrift and creativity are important for a group of teams that generally is not going to compete with MLB financially.

Below is a list of all the players I looked at, ranked in order of how much I think their departure affected their previous team and the league. For me, there are really about three or four classes: Matsui and Johjima, Iwamura through Iguchi, and everyone else. You can possibly put Matsui, Kobayashi and Yabuta in their own class as well, as guys who were quickly replaced but did leave a gap in their absences.

* I forgot about both these guys when compiling the original lists. Mori was successfully posted and signed with Tampa Bay, but got hurt in his first spring training and was never heard from again. Iriki played in the Mets and Blue Jays organizations, but got busted for PED usage and never reached the Majors. He resurfaced with Yokohama in 2008, but retired after the season.

** I left out Yukinaga Maeda as well.

Some of you may have seen my (ugh) tweet about the Yankees’ visit to Japan to watch Yu Darvish pitch on August 20. Billy Eppler and Damon Oppenheimer got to see Darvish pitch a decent game, going nine innings with 10 K’s and no walks, but allowing four runs on nine hits and ultimately getting a no-decision as Nippon Ham won in 10 innings. YouTube highlights are here, and Darvish’s velocity data is here.

Here’s a little more from the original Sponichi article. I’ll start with the headline:

ヤンキース幹部、極秘来日！超異例のダル視察

A Top-Secret Visit to Japan from the Yankees Front Office! Making an Extreme Exception to Watch Darvish

I guess the cat is out of the bag now, huh? Sitting behind the plate with a radar gun isn’t exactly a great way for Yankees execs to conceal themselves in Japan. And this is an exception? The Yanks did send Gene Michael to Japan a year or two ago, and have a full-time scout there.

I guess the “exception” talk comes from this quote, from an unnamed source familiar with the situation.

「彼らはキャッシュマンＧＭのいわば右腕で、選手の評価に関しては全幅の信頼を置かれている。２人がそろって日本に行くのは極めて異例で、ヤンキースにとって最重要事項であることを意味する

“They are [GM Brian] Cashman’s so-called righthand men, he places all his trust regarding player evaluation in them. Sending both of them to Japan is an extreme exception, so that means this is a most important matter for the Yankees.”

Another unnamed MLB source added this comment:

「松坂の金額は非現実的だが、３０００万（約２５億５０００万円）〜４０００万ドル（約３４億円）ぐらいいくのでは」

“Matsuzaka money is unrealistic, but he should go for $30-40m.”

Yes. Totally agree on this one. A lot of crazy numbers have been thrown around with regards to a potential posting fee, and I’ve always been skeptical about another $50m posting, as good a Darvish is.

Now, if you’re still with me, it’s worth pointing out that there is no indication that Darvish will be posted after this season. Sponichi helpfully pointed out that Darvish opened this season with four years, 93 days of NPB service time. Since international free agency requires nine years of service time, and a year is 145 days, Darvish started this season four years and 52 days away. That would have Darvish reaching the free agency requirements during the 2014 season.

In other Sponichi news, the Mets and Nationals also had scouts at Friday’s game. The Mets’ always-chatty Isao Ojimi said “my evaluation hasn’t changed. He’s excellent.” This article also quotes an associate of Eppler’s, saying that Darvish was “alright”. I didn’t see a quote from the Nationals.

I normally don’t pay much attention to the All-Star Game, but this caught my attention.

Yu Darvish unveiled a new pitch called the “gyro-cutter” in his All-Star appearance this year. According to the linked article, he had just shown it in practice on the 21st. Said Darvish: “it’s the first time I used it in a game. It’s one type of cut fastball. Just the trajectory is different from what we’ve had until now.”

Here’s a YouTube clip I found of Darvish throwing the pitch against Giants catcher Shinnosuke Abe. The pitches shown in this video are numbers 13-22 of Darvish’s appearance, if you’d like to check out his velocity chart for the game. The pitches show up at cut fastballs in the data I collected.

Abe had this to say about the at-bat, which resulted in an RBI double: “it’s like a rising pitch from a submariner. I tried with all my might to outlast it with foul balls.”

So what’s “gyro” about this cut fastball? The spin. The Gyroball is supposed to spin sideways toward the plate, rather than rotating top over bottom. I think the best example of the pitch’s grip and trajectory can be seen at about 0:40 of the video. I own a copy of Gyroball originator Kazushi Tezuka’s book, but I haven’t read it, so take what I’m saying here with an appropriate measure of salt. In any event, Abe had a good at-bat and looked capable of fighting the pitch off.

On the day that Stephen Strasburg made his MLB debut, we dust off this conversation with Keith Law, originally posted on July 7, 2009.

If you’re reading this blog, there’s a high probability that you’ve heard of Keith Law. Keith is a veteran of Baseball Prospectus and the Toronto Blue Jays’ front office, and currently the lead baseball analyst for ESPN’s Scouts Inc. Keith took the time to answer a few questions on how Yu Darvish compares to Washington Nationals draftee, Stephen Strasburg.

NPB Tracker: How does Strasburg’s repertoire compare to Darvish’s?

Keith Law: Darvish shows far more pitches than Strasburg, who has four but spent most of the spring using just two.

NT: Who do you like better mechanically?

KL: I would say Strasburg – he’s easier and cleaner – although the sheer arm speed puts us into uncertain territory with Strasburg. We have little experience with starters who throw that hard and get their arms going that fast.

NT: If you had to choose one of the two pitchers for an MLB rotation this year, who would it be?

KL: I don’t think there’s a wrong answer here, but I’d take Darvish, given his experience facing a higher level of competition.

NT: Which of the two has the higher upside, and why?

KL: That’s a good question and I have gone back and forth on this. I think Strasburg’s fastball and hard curve rate well ahead of Darvish’s top two pitches, so I’d take Strasburg.

NT: Thank you Keith.

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