Yokohama finished up their offseason shopping last week, introducing Takayuki Shinohara and Daisuke Hayakawa, and announcing the signing of Termel Sledge. Here’s the complete list of BayStars acquisitions, which ran on Sponich and was helpfully translated on Yakyu Baka:
Pos
Player Name
Age
Previous Team
P
Shimizu, Naoyuki
34
Chiba Lotte Marines
P
Bootcheck, Chris
31
MLB – Pirates
P
Shinohara, Takayuki
33
Softbank Hawks
P
Sakamoto, Yataro
27
Nippon Ham Fighters
P
Matsuyama, Suguru
20
Nippon Ham Fighters
P
Sugihara, Yo
24
Nomo BC
P
Wang, Yi-Zheng
24
CPBL – Bears
C
Hashimoto, Tasuku
33
Chiba Lotte Marines
INF
Inada, Naoto
30
Nippon Ham Fighters
INF
Castillo, Jose
28
CPBL – Lions
OF
Sledge, Terrmel
32
Nippon Ham Fighters
OF
Hayakawa, Daisuke
34
Chiba Lotte Marines
That’s a decent group of players, but the key here is the guys they’ll be taking plate appearances and innings away from.
Yokohama has some decent core hitters (Shuichi Murata, Seiichi Uchikawa), but in 2009 they had too many positions that they got no offense from. In 2009, the ‘Stars had four who got over 100 plate appearances despite hitting under .200. Dropping the number to 40 pa’s reveals another four. The additions of Hashimoto, Inada, Hayakawa and Castillo should be a huge improvement over that group. A little improvement from younger guys like Keijiro Matsumoto wouldn’t hurt either.
On the mound, Yokohama only had one reliable starter (Daisuke Miura) in 2009, and only three relievers who threw more than 50 innings (Hiroyuki Sanada, Shun Yamaguchi, Kentaro Takasaki). To that end, Shimizu is a nice pickup. He’s really not the ace he’s sometimes billed as, but should absorb about 150 innings. The real improvements to the rotation, however, are already on the roster: full seasons from Hayato Terahara and Stephen Randolph. I see the bullpen arms ‘Hama acquired mostly interesting question marks — a former dominator who hasn’t pitched recently (Shinohara), a guy with a couple good seasons to his name (Sakamoto) and an American with good velocity but poor command at the MLB level (Bootcheck).
Finally, there is a feel-good story amongst this: Sugihara is a former Lotte farmhand, but was released after the 2006 season. He had been working at a Docomo mobile phone shop in Osaka and getting by on 80,000 yen ($800) per month while moonlighting with the Nomo Baseball Club, and now he’s getting another chance.
Is all this enough to get Yokohama off the cellar? We’ll have to see, but the BayStars should definitely be closer to the pack in 2010.
The 2009 season is in the books, and the MVPs go to Yu Darvish in the Pacific League, with Alex Ramirez receiving the honor for the Central League. Darvish earns the award for the second time in his career and Ramirez obtains the award for the second straight season.
The Rookie of the Year award is received by Tokyo Yomiuri Giants outfielder Testuya Matsumoto, the first time in 51 years that two players from the same team received the RoY in consecutive years (Giants reliever Tetsuya Yamaguchi took the prize last year). The Pacific League award goes to reliever Tadashi Settsu of the Softbank Hawks.
The Best Nine Awards have also been announced and the winners are as follows:
Here’s a rare sighting: empty seats at Koshien. Hanshin drew fewer than 30,000 fans at Koshein for the first time in almost five years.
And In English…
The incomparable Deanna snapped a shot of the Marines fans holding up signage indicating that 63,580 fans have signed a petition requesting the team to keep Bobby Valentine around beyond this season.
My fellow Chicago ex-pat Matt of Yakyu All-Stars took a picture of Norichika Aoki’s WBC Gold Medal. I gotta say, that’s pretty underwhelming. Looks like it’s filled with chocolate.
Simon has pics of Kazuhiro ‘Daimajin’ Sasaki throwing out the first pitch to Jose Canseco at a recent BayStars game. Fresh off his failure to knock out Danny Bonaduce, Canseco wanted to take Daimajin deep, but even though he got nine pitches he couldn’t do it.
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.
