NPB Tracker

Coming into a June 14th series with the Kansas City Royals, it looked like the end might be near for Hideki Matsui. At 37, Matsui is essentially a one-trick pony, but his season line entering the Kansas City series was a lame .216/.268/.332, with just four home runs. The man he replaced in Oakland, Jack Cust, was even out performing him in Seattle (though his .684 OPS is equally unimpressive). Since then Matsui has shown signs of life — .261/.471/.522 in 8 games, and even seeing some time in the field during interleague play.

• On his homer against KC on 6/16: “It was an easy fastball on the inside of the plate. I hit it just about perfectly. Would’ve liked to have hit it a bit further.”
• On the feeling around the A’s clubhouse: “We’re feeling better — the team as a whole, I think, so I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do from here on.”
• On being installed in the 3rd spot int he order: “Of course I need to be responsible and properly prepare myself. I just want to put out some results and lead this team to victory.”

Matsui is also pursuing his 500th professional home run. He needs only one more to reach the mark, and jokingly told reporters that it “will probably take another month.”

I guess when it comes down to it, I don’t need to add much to the headline. Yomiuri is trying to get Josh Fields out of the Rockies organization. The news comes from Sports Hochi, which is part of the Yomiuri media group, and says the Giants are “pouring all their effort into agreeing to a contract quickly.” The Giants are reportedly looking at Fields as a third base alternative to Rusty Ryal, who has really struggled this year. None of Yomiuri’s homegrown options seem to have the chops for the hot corner.

Fields was once The White Sox’ heir apparent to Joe Crede, and has a 23 home run season on his resume, back in 2007. He hasn’t done much at the Major League level since then, those it seems he has quite a bit of MLB roster time as he hasn’t played more than 75 games at 3A since 2006. This is his first year in the hitter-friendly PCL, and he’s tearing it up to the tune of .365/.429/.674. I actually took a long look at Fields when the news came out that Hiroshima was looking for help, but that I thought with his line he might get a look with the Rockies.

This seems like a deal that has a good chance at getting done. I think Yomiuri picked a good guy to go after, though in retrospect, simply keeping Edgar Gonzalez wouldn’t have been a bad move.

With NPB off until Friday, it’s a good time to refresh the Bullet Points series.

• NPB has decided not to pursue changes to the Posting System, according to a June 13 Sanspo report. Difficulty in changing the system on the MLB side and the possibility of collecting large posting fees were cited as the reasons behind the support for the current system.
• Yakult has added Brazilian Rafael Fernandez to its 70-man shihaikai roster, an upgrade from the ikusei roster. Fernandez was selected in the ikusei draft back in 2008, and has a 1.97 ERA in eight games at ni-gun this season.
• Hanshin did the same with Venezuelan lefty Robert Zarate. Zarate was signed out of the independent Baseball Challenge League last offseason.
• Norihiro Nakamura is back, this time with the Yokohama BayStars. Nori hit the first home run of his return on the 18th against Softbank.
• The Chiba Lotte Marines have come to an agreement to acquire infielder Jose Castillo, who was with Yokohama last year. Castillo had been tearing up the Mexican League, and I figure he’ll play LF or DH in Chiba.
• The Braves and Twins had scouts at Yu Darvish’s June 15 start, where he was shockingly defeated by Hanshin. Atlanta’s always chatty Hiroyuki Ohya had this to say: “It felt like he was pressing with this fastball. He has less break on his slider than he did two years ago. He can do better than this.”
• Yakult is set to sell a cocktail “produced” by slugger Wladimir Balentien. The drink will be based on Curacao, a liqueur from Coco’s homeland in the Netherlands Antilles.
• Agent Don Nomura has a new client, pitcher Keisuke Imamura, currently of the Kobe 9 Cruise of the Kansai Independent League. According to the Kobe News, Imamura stands at 190 cm (6’3), reaches 148 kmph (92mph) with his fastball, and has a 14.54 K/9IP ratio this season. The Astros, Giants, and Yankees are said to have shown interest.

• Rakuten has imported first baseman Luis Alfonso Garcia from the Mexican League. The big righty has already appeared in three games for the Eagles, and is 3 for 10 with a double, and has participated in his first hero interview. Rakuten has a bit of a pattern of in-season imports having some initial success, then flaming out in year two, so we’ll see how Garcia does. I love his stance, though.
• Orix has picked up 23 year-old righty Wilson Matos on an ikusei contract. Matos had been with the Cardinals 1A affiliate, but it looks like all of his game experience came in the low minors with the Boston and Florida organizations.
• Nikkan Sports is reporting that Hiroshima is looking to add a bat, specifically a righthanded outfielder with gap power. They reportedly have a list of five or six names, but Nikkan Sports didn’t give us anyone specific. Hmmmm…. my guesses would be Jeremy Hermida, Jeff Larish, Bobby Scales. I guess I have a bit of a bias for guys I’ve seen in the Major Leagues, specifically those who have come through the Bay Area.
• Nikkan Sports also reports that Lotte is also in the market for an outfielder, and were specifically going after John Bowker, but hadn’t been able to close out a deal as of the 11th. Bowker is a good pick, another guy with player plenty of 3A experience, but little MLB success. Loyal commenter Chris Jackson gave us a heads up on Lotte’s scouting activities a couple weeks ago.

First links roundup in a while, as usual all in Japanese today.

• The monthly MVPs were announced yesterday. In the Pacific League, Yu Darvish and Tadahito Iguchi won, while Wladimir Balentien and Tetsuya Utsumi took home the prizes in the Central League. It’s nice to see Balentien get the award this month as I think he got robbed in April.
• At an elementary school visit, Darvish was asked “why did you start to play baseball?”, to which he answered “when I was an elementary school student I also played ice hockey but the practices were tough.” I could see Darvish as a defenseman with great reach.
• Nippon Ham racked up a team scoreless streak of 52 innings last week, tying the NPB record set by Hanshin in 1942. After the streak came to an end Saturday against Yakult, Nippon Ham immediately went out and put up back-to-back shutouts against Yomiuri, so they already have another 18 inning scoreless streak. Nippon Ham has a cool 2.21 team ERA, which amazingly is second to Softbanks 2.15.
• My re-translation of Alex Cabrera’s comments regarding his 350th NPB home run wound up getting translated to Spanish for a Venezuelan publication. Now that this has gone through a few iterations I’d love to see how close this Spanish translation comes to Cabu’s original remarks.
• Cleveland minor leaguer Tooru Murata has a blog going. One post that caught my eye was this one, in which he writes about traveling by bus, saying “the air conditioning is too strong so the bus is too cold. I lose the feeling in my fingertips.” Murata seems to be on the DL, but he has a good K:BB ratio so far this year. He very experienced for his level though.
• Orix is selling “pro model uniforms” jerseys this summer, for JPY 34,500.
• This photo was taken above Hakkodate Ocean Stadium in Hokkaido back on May 15th.
• Personal non-news observation #1: I haven’t watched much major league baseball at all this year, but yesterday I watched a bit of the Giants game against Colorado. The Giants started a righthanded #32, who I had never seen before, and I kept thinking “wow, this guy is great, who is he?” It turned out to be former Hanshin and Orix pitcher Ryan Vogelsong.
• Personal non-news observation #2: I don’t think any pitcher in NPB enjoys what he does as much as Orix’s Yuki Nishi does. I’ve really enjoyed watching him this season.

Note: I’ve made some additions, based on suggestions from the comments.

I get most of my NPB knowledge from Japanese sources, but there is tons of great content on Japanese baseball being published in English every day. Here’s a rundown of sites and sources that I heartily recommend.

The Blogosphere

• I’ll have to open with Yakyu Baka, curated by the tireless Gen. If you’re looking for thorough, current information on Japanese baseball, this is the first place to stop.
• Boston-based longtime Japanese baseball guy Daigo Fujiwara now has content in blog format on his site, japaneseballplayers.com.
• JapaneseBaseball.com made Japanese baseball accessible to me, as it certainly has many others, while I was still navigating through the tricky early waters of the Japanese language. It remains a fantastic resource, hosting five blogs, including John Gibson’s Japanese Baseball Daily blog, Michael Westbay’s Bayside West, and Christopher Amano-Langtree’s Tiger Tails.
• Daily Yomiuri writer Jim Allen’s work is archived on JapaneseBaseball.com as well, which is great because the Yomiuri’s website leaves a lot to be desired.
• Deanna may have relocated from Japan, but that hasn’t dampened her enthusiasm for Tokyo Big6 college baseball. The blogging has gone on.
• Steve Novosel’s Chiba Lotte blog welovemarines.com has awoken from a long winter slumber.
• The Kokoyakyu Blog publishes a Yakyu Baka level of information on Japanese high school baseball.
• NPB Card Guy has a knack for finding an interesting baseball card to post every week.
• Yakult is a popular team among English bloggers, with the tenured Tsubamegun and the newcomer Tokyo Yakult Swallows Etc.
• I know of a couple of good Korean baseball sites: mykbo.net and True Stories of Korean Baseball.
• In addition to my work here, I write for Fangraphs and Rotowire.
• Hablo Espanol? Check out Beisbol Japones, a Spanish-language NPB site.
• Yakult Swallows import righty Tony Barnette has a weekly blog.

The Twitterverse

• Ken and I are both on Twitter.
• Jason Coskrey of the Japan Times is one of my favorite guys to exchange banter with during games on Twitter.
• Former Softbank Hawk CJ Nitkowski is another.
• Jim Allen has joined the Twitter revolution.
• Current Yokohama BayStar Clayton Hamilton is tweeting his NPB experiences.
• So is Bryan Bullington.
• And current Fresno Grizzly Marc Kroon.
• Mykbo.net has a Twitter presence as well.
• As does Tsubamegun, @tokyoswallows.

Did I leave anyone out? It certainly wasn’t intentional — feel free to add to this list in the comments.

The best NPB newcomer this season has been, without a doubt. Yakult’s Wladimir Balentien. Through 117 plate appearances, he’s got a slash line of .367/.462/.827 and leads Japan with 13 home runs. It’s not unusual for foreign players to start strong in Japan, but Balentien’s status as a former top prospect, his relatively young age (27 in July) and his massive power numbers make him an interesting case to study.

First I grabbed the opponent and pitch data for the 13 home runs he’s hit so far:

Nothing too surprising here — a lot of unimpressive fastballs, and some sliders and curves which I’ll assume were of the hanging variety. Home runs off Yokohama pitchers account for a big chunk of his power production. What I don’t see in this list is a lot of Japan’s top caliber pitchers, with the possible exception of Sawamura. The power is real, but it’s reasonable to expect it to even out as Balentien faces more of Japan’s top competition.

Balentien entered 2011 with a bit of a reputation for struggling against breaking pitches. That hasn’t really been the case so far:

To put this into context, Balentien has seen 471 pitches so far. It does appear that he does have a little bit of issue with sliders. I dug a little further into the data and found that he seems to struggle with Shun Tohno, one of the better slider guys in the Central League.

Lastly, the guys at Tsubamegun made this observation:

Balentien has monster numbers, but he needs to watch [Josh] Whitesell work a count, take notes, and stop getting sucked into first-pitches in the strike zone. The results are bad more often than not.

The Tsubamegun guys have seen far more of Balentien than I ever have, so I’d thought I’d check their assertion against the data. Here’s what Balentien has done on the first pitch of each of his 117 plate appearances, aggregated by result:

73 takes; 44 swings, 27 resulting in contact. The six home runs jump out — if you took away his other seven homers and he just had these six, he would still be tied for second in the Central League in bombs. The three line drive hits aren’t too shabby either, so we have a total of nine hits and seven outs.

Balentien is averaging a solid four pitches per plate appearance, so he’s not being unduly aggressive. To the extent that Balentien can identify hittable breaking pitches and weak first-pitch fastballs, I say keep on hacking.

Japan’s professional baseball executive committee held a meeting in Tokyo on May 16th. Among other things, the Rakuten organization’s proposal to another look at the notorious posting system was accepted.

The posting system is actually not among my favorite discussion topics. Much of the time when I’m asked about it, there seems to be a subtext of “don’t you think the system needs to change because the (insert AL East big-budget team here) wasted a bunch of money on it?” The last time I wrote about it was last year, after the Hisashi Iwakuma situation resolved itself, over at the at my other blogging home. Without rehashing that article, the gist of my position is that a lot of things have to go right for a posting to be considered a success for all sides.

Anyway, according to Kyodo News via Sanspo,  Rakuten’s specific suggestion was to award negotiating rights to the top three bidding MLB teams. This proposal strikes me as interesting for three reasons: 1) on the surface it seems rather player-friendly 2) Rakuten suggesting this makes me think that they wanted to get some kind of compensation for losing Iwakuma 3) it’s exactly what Don Nomura suggested when the Iwakuma negotiations hit troubled waters.

Looking back at the Iwakuma situation, we’ll never know how things would have worked out if this rule had been in place, but I think it would have increased the odds of Iwakuma being in an MLB uniform this season. Minnesota finished a distant second to Oakland’s $19m with a $7.7m bid, but who knows if they would have had better results at the negotiating table? At the very least, they would have had an obvious advantage over Oakland in being able to commit more of their total budget towards the contract offer.

More reflectively, the whole process could have played out differently had this rule been in place. Maybe the A’s wouldn’t have bid quite as much for Iwakuma if they would have had a chance to sign him without being the high bidder. Maybe they would have made a different contract offer if they were going to have to compete with other teams. Iwakuma and Nomura would have certainly negotiated differently, knowing there were alternatives.

Having thought through the Iwakuma situations, the changes I’d make to the idea would be to grant some kind of priority negotiating window to the top bidder, and to keep the names of the second and third highest bidders sealed until the end of that window. That would offer an incentive to being the highest bidder, and put a reasonable limit the player’s negotiating leverage (or rather, a bit of a dis-incentive on being the third bidder).

But that would further complicate an already clunky system, and result in a long, drawn-out process. And after writing all this, I’ve reached a point where I’m wondering why the posting system is necessary. Why not set up some kind of a transfer period each offseason, and let NPB teams and MLB teams negotiate their own transfer agreements?

I’ve mentioned once or twice that Joel Guzman hasn’t looked good at the plate so far this season. On Thursday he went 2-3 against Yakult to bring his average up a little bit, but he he still has a rough line so far: 37 plate appearances, 6 hits, 1 home run, 17 strikeouts, 0 walks. Obviously if this continues, his Chunichi Dragons career won’t last long.

I dug in a little and charted the result he’s gotten on each of the pitches he’s faced so far this season.

Yikes. About one pitch out of three has resulted in a called strike or a whiff for Guzman. My perception was that Guzman had been waving at a lot of breaking pitches, so I narrowed my query to just look at strikes.

I don’t mind the strikes looking so much; those are explainable by taking first pitch fastballs, and adjusting to a new strike zone. The number of fastballs he’s swung through surprises me though.

So is there any hope for Guzman? Maybe, but he needs to quickly make some adjustments, notably laying off breaking pitches, waiting for fastballs, and identifying mistake pitches.

A couple of roster changes have taken place in the wake of last month’s earthquake. Here they are.

• Brian Bannister left Japan in the wake of the earthquake, but hasn’t returned and has subsequently been placed on the restricted list by Yomiuri. Jason Coskrey of the Japan Times has the details. Bannister had been competing with a number of foreign pitchers for a roster spot, and I don’t expect him to be replaced immediately, if at all.
• Rakuten has granted Juan Morillo his release, which he reportedly requested due to shock of the earthquake. Rakuten picked up Romulo Sanchez from the Yankees a couple weeks ago, so I guess they saw this coming.
• I posted last weekend that Yokohama lefty Brent Leach has so far elected not to return to Japan, and has been placed on the restricted list. To take his place, the BayStars are going to bring Stephen Randolph in for a workout in the next couple days.