NPB Tracker

… this time lefty reliever Yoshihiro Doi on a minor league contract (via Nikkan Sports).

Doi is an interesting case. He qualified for free agency after the 2010 season and immediately headed to the Western Hemisphere, an endeavor that was totally overlooked on this site. According to Nikkan Sports, Doi didn’t find any takers among MLB and Mexican League teams, and although he passed an Indy League tryout, he wound up spending 2011 on the shelf with knee visa problems. This year he hired agency IBC NY to represent him, and caught on with Baltimore. He’ll join former Chiba Lotte Marine Ryohei Tanaka in the O’s system.

Doi is 35 and hasn’t shown much over the last few years, but kudos to him for sticking to his guns and finding an opportunity. Taking my usual glass-half-full view, he’s lefthanded and had enough skill to hang around NPB for 12 years, so that’s something. Here are links to his stats and stuff.

Coming: Yataro Sakamoto

Going: Toru Hosokawa, Koji Ohnuma, Kimiyasu Kudoh, Kenta Matsuzaka, Yoshihiro Doi, Shinji Taninaka

Staying: Hiroyuki Nakajima, Jose Fernandez, Dee Brown, Brian Sikorski, Alex Graman

Summary: This series is titled “Offseason Chages”, but the Lions haven’t given me much to write about. Seibu let defensively-minded catcher Toru Hosokawa take his .191 batting average south to Fukuoka, and will let Ginjiro Sumitani and Tatsuyuki Uemoto carry the load. They also swapped righty relievers with Yokohama, picking up Yataro Sakamoto. Beyond that, the Lions replaced some bit players with 2010 draftees.

The real keys Seibu’s offseason are in the players who will be returning. Denying Hiroyuki Nakajima’s repeated posting requests is addition by not subtracting. The rest is mostly addition by health. Slugger Takeya “Okawari-kun” Nakamura was never really healthy last year, but still popped 25 home runs. #2 starter Takayuki Kishi missed all of July and August last year. The low-profile but highly-productive bat of mid-season signing Jose Fernandez will be available from opening day. 2011 Sophomore Yusei Kikuchi lost a year of development, making only two ni-gun appearances . And even Alex Graman, who was lights-out as a reliever but has been shelved for two years, is back. Obviously some of those guys are going to contribute more than others, but healthy seasons from Kishi and Okawari-kun alone would add a couple wins to the bottom line.

The underlying fact is that this is a talented group that didn’t need much tweaking to remain competitive in 2011. The Lions took a magic number of four into the last week of the 2010 season, and won more games than anyone else in the Pacific League; if they had managed just one more tie, they would have taken first place. Just three games separated the first and fourth teams in the PL last year, and I expect things to be similarly tight this season.