NPB Tracker

Japan manager Tatsunori Hara has settled on a WBC roster. Here it is:

Pitchers
Yu Darvish
Takahiro Mahara
Masahiro Tanaka
Hideaki Wakui
Daisuke Matsuzaka
Minoru Iwata
Hisashi Iwakuma
Kyuji Fujikawa
Tetsuya Utsumi
Satoshi Komatsu
Shunsuke Watanabe
Tetsuya Yamaguchi
Toshiya Sugiuchi

Catchers
Kenji Johjima
Shinnosuke Abe
Yoshiyuki Ishihara

Infielders
Hiroyuki Nakajima
Yasuyuki Kataoka
Akinori Iwamura
Michiro Ogasawara
Shuichi Murata
Munenori Kawasaki

Outfielders
Kosuke Fukudome
Norichika Aoki
Seiichi Uchikawa
Yoshiyuki Kamei
Atsunori Inaba
Ichiro

(SI has the AP article as well)

Notable departures are Nobuhiko Matsunaka (achilles problem), Kenta Kurihara (affected by elbow surgery last year), Toru Hosokawa (right shoulder pain), Tsuyoshi Wada, and Takayuki Kishi. Health reasons were not cited for Wada and Kishi.

Overall, the roster looks pretty good to me, though it’s somewhat short on power.The inclusion of Yoshiyuki Kamei makes no obvious sense to me, but I could see him as a defensive replacement/pinch runner. The only other questionable pick I see is Shunsuke Watanabe. He’s been hit or miss in NPB, and as I recall he wasn’t that great in the 2006 WBC.

Hope springs eternal at the start of every season. Here are some spring training notes, mostly on guys who are trying to make their teams.

(All of the below items point to Japanese-language articles)

• Ken Kadokura is testing a two-seam fastball and a sinker, neither of which he threw in Japan. “The movement on my breaking pitches is bigger than it was in Japan,” said Kadokura, “I think I can use these”.
• Junichi Tazawa threw 51 pitches to Jason Varitek. “I was nervous the whole time,” Tazawa said with a smile. “I was concerned that I was stretching my arm more than usual,”
• Kei Igawa threw 15 pitches to Hideki Matsui. Matsui hit eight, and took seven. “I’m glad I didn’t hit him,” Igawa said with big laughter. Last year, Igawa plunked a minor leaguer in batting practices.
• Ken Takahashi got a decent review from Blue Jays pitching coach Brad Arnsberg: “My first look at him was good. We have two open rotation spots. He has enough of a chance to get one. I hope he makes the team.”
• Marc Kroon threw 70 pitches in a bullpen session on the 19th and will appear in an inner-squad game on the 23rd. He’s working on a two-seamer and a shuuto. “first I’m getting back into game shape. I want to get a feel for all my pitches,” he said.
• On his WBC off day, Ichiro travelled 1200km back to Kobe to take batting practice at Skymark Stadium.
• Rakuten manager Katsuya Nomura has come up with an innovative approach to batting practice: tape a picture of Yu Darvish to the pitching machine. Did it work? Nomura looks happy with the results.

Lots of Koji Uehara on this site recently, not much Kenshin Kawakami. Let’s do something about that.

Kawakami is in camp with the Braves and has been working on adapting to the MLB ball. According to Sponichi, he threw 37 pitches in his most recent bullpen season, working in his cutter and curveball. This is a contrast to his approach in Japan, where he would only throw curves and fastballs until just before opening day.

Kawakami seems like he has a little work ahead of him in getting used to the MLB ball. The righty was quoted as saying  “suddenly throwing all these breaking pitches, well, there was some unease…” before adding, “I didn’t get comfortable with my breaking pitches. I want to talk to the pitching coach and come up with a solution that works for me”.

David Ross, who caught Kawakami’s bullpen session, said that Kawakami’s curveball reminded him of his former Dodgers teammate, Kazuhisa Ishii.

Quick notes about Koji Uehara — he’ll make his spring debut on Feb 27 vs the Marlins, and his regular season debut on April 8 at home against the Yankees. Uehara opens the season as the Orioles’ #2 starter behind Jeremy Guthrie (who as it happens, has a Japanese-American mom).

A look on the seven NPB players who qualified and elected to file for free agency after 2008, where I predicted them signing and where they actually signed.

Koji Uehara (P, Yomiuri Giants): Signed with Baltimore; I predicted St. Louis.

Kenshin Kawakami (P, Chunichi Dragons): Signed with Atlanta, which is where I predicted.

Ken Takahashi (P, HIroshima Carp): Signed a minor league deal with Toronto; I predicted a major league deal with the Mets. 

Ryoji Aikawa (C,  Yokohama BayStars):  Signed with Yakult; I suggested that he might get a minor league deal with Detroit. I thought I predicted Rakuten as an NPB destination but I can’t find that now.

Daisuki Miura (P, Yokohama BayStars): Stayed with Yokohama; I predicted he’d sign with Hanshin.

Toshihiro Noguchi (C, Hanshin Tigers): Signed with Yokohama, which is where I predicted.

Norihiro Nakamura (3B, Chunichi Dragons): Signed with Rakuten, which is where I predicted.

So I got 3/7. Not too bad. The last two were pretty poorly kept secrets though, so it’s more like 1/5.

The Red Sox have four Japanese pitchers on their 40-man roster, and as such are getting their share of coverage in the Japanese media. 

• Daisuke Matsuzaka has been training in advance of the WBC with his former team, the newly re-uniformed Saitama Seibu Lions. See if you can spot him in this YouTube footage. The catching drill around 5:55 is worth watching too.
• Perhaps taking a cue from Ichiro, Matsuzaka also found his way to the batting cage. Matsuzaka took 28 swings off Seibu ace Hideaki Wakui, hitting 13 over the fence. A passing John Wasdin commented, “it’s Japan’s Big Papi”, probably with a tone of sarcasm that didn’t make the trip from English to Japanese and back. Matsuzaka did make at least one pinch-hitting appearance in his Seibu days.
• Junichi Tazawa is getting a quick start on his Boston career. He’s been in camp for a couple days and is working out with Takashi Saito. Sanspo has pics of his first Red Sox bullpen session: 1, 2. He threw 62 pitches.
• Tazawa followed that up with a 54-pitch session on the 14th.
• Takashi Saito celebrated his 39th birthday with a 4km run.
• And I’ll close with an English-language article, an Alex Speier piece reflecting on Hideo Nomo, with comments from Tazawa and Saito.

Man, it is pouring here in Silicon Valley on this President’s Day weekend. Great time to do a little bloggin’

The Japanese sports rags have been publishing pics of NPB camps for a couple of weeks, but now that MLB & WBC camps are opening we’ll get coverage of those as well:

• Japan’s WBC camp has opened in Miyazaki, southern Japan. Several thousand fans were on hand to see Ichiro et al work out at Sun Marine Stadium. Here’s a pic of Ichiro and Daisuke Matsuzaka, with Yu Darvish in the background.
• Kenshin Kawakami signs his first few MLB autographs.
• Koji Uehara gets a slap on the back from O’s manager Dave Trembley.
• Kei Igawa is pitching for a job, or for a trade.

In addition to a changeup and spike curve, Nikkan Sports is reporting that Koji Uehara is working on fastballs of the two-seam and cut variety. I thought Uehara already had a cutter, but I could be wrong. According to Nikkan Sports, he’s going to try out all these new pitches in spring training exhibition games. 

Sanspo adds that Uehara arrived in the camp on the 12th and hit the field almost immediately, making over 150 throws in long-toss and mound-distance excercises. Sanspo notes taht pitchers who work quickly tend to do well in the majors (I like that trait myself), and that should suit Uehara, who threw a 1hr 59min complete game in 1999.

I’m optimistic about Uehara. To be realistic, he’ll have to learn a new league, prove he’s healthy enough to start every fifth day, and get used to not getting the borderline calls he was given with Yomiuri. But it looks like he’s making adjustments, he’s a smart pitcher and he’s clearly thrilled to be in the Majors. I’m looking forward to watching him this year.

…while it lasted.

Jack Zduriencik and Don Wakamatsu can breathe a sigh of relief. Ichiro’s flirtation with the mound is over. Word got back around to Seattle’s brass and coincidentally, Ichiro announced that he’s stopping. I’m sure the Mariners would have found out about this anyway, but I’d like to think that NPB Tracker played a role in this development.

Anyway, after his mound session on the 7th, Ichiro took three days off. Ichiro is training on his own so we don’t know if he would have taken those days off anyway, but when he returned, he commented to Sanspo: “my upper-right body is still. I’m quitting (pitching) (big laughter)”. Nikkan Sports had a similiar quote: “my shoulder is stiff and won’t move. Getting caught up with pitching got me into a little trouble”*. And with that, Ichiro returned to hitting and fielding drills in the wonderful Green Stadium Kobe Skymark Stadium.

I think Ichiro proved a point — he has enough baseball talent to do something like this with credibility. Most of the commentary I saw on this was positive, aside from the Mariners fans who were reasonably worried he’d get hurt. It’s tempting to think we could see Ichiro play in the field and then come into pitch — it’s too bad he doesn’t throwlefthanded, so we could see him play in the field, pitch to a batter, and then go back. Maybe it’s better for this to be part of the Ichiro folklore, but I’ll go on the record and say I would like to see him pitch in a real game.

Before I go, let me be pedantic and clear up a couple of mistranslations I’ve seen around the web on this story:

• Ichiro didn’t throw 21 curveballs, he threw his first breaking pitch on his 21st throw
• There was never any mention of Ichiro throwing a curveball, only forkballs
• Ichiro isn’t training with Team Japan. He’s training on his own at Kobe’s Skymark stadium, and he has a couple former players working out with him
• As far as I know, Tatsunori Hara didn’t ask Ichiro to warm up as a pitcher. From what I’ve seen he simply said he’d have to use a fielder in an emergency situation given pitch count and tiebreaker rules, and Ichiro took to the mound on his own. If someone else knows differently, let me know.

*The phrases Ichiro used are a little ambigious to a non-native Japanese speaker like myself. Here’s the original Japanese: 「肩がパンパンになって動けなくなった。調子こいてピッチングしたらエライことになった」

In an effort to get the average time of games down under three hours, NPB has decided to introduce a new rule requiring pitchers to deliver each pitch within 15 seconds. This is part of NPB’s Green Baseball Project, in which the league is trying to do it’s part for the environment by cutting down on energy expenditures associated with playing games. A noble goal with a laughable logo.

This rule change hasn’t gone over well with the players:

Nippon Ham ace Yu Darvish: “That’s not baseball”.

2008 Sawamura Award winner Hisashi Iwakuma: “Darvish is correct. Even now our time is pressed. If the time is going to be compressed, they should be thorough and widen the strike zone. This is how we make our living”.

Rakuten manager Katsuya Nomura: “to have a rule for that is nonsense. Baseball has always been a sport without a time limit. The fans pay a lot of money to come to the ballpark, so we should be in the park as much as possible”.

Darvish again: “I’m not going to take any kind of action. I’ll ignore it.”

Commissioner Ryozo Kato: “you’re pros so get used to it”.

Kyuji Fujikawa was the first take a hit from the new rule, taking three balls in his first spring training practice game appearance. Gotta take the players’ side on this one. I hope this rule doesn’t make it out of spring training.