NPB Tracker

Was playing around with the ol’ db and wrote a quick query to pull out average fastball velocities this season in Japan. These are exceedingly simple lists; I didn’t filter by number of pitches thrown or anything like that.

Here are the 15 fastest averages:

No surprises here, mostly relievers and many foreign pitchers, though I didn’t expect to see Wolfe. Morillo, de la Cruz, Uchi and Yang have all thrown very few innings so take their appearance on this list with a grain of salt for each.

And here are 15 slowest:

No real surprises here either, though it is striking to see how much softer Watanabe throws than everyone else.

Put the 2010 Chiba Lotte Marines season down as something I was wrong about. In a year when I thought they’d be mid-division at best, Lotte has by meany measures been the best team in the Pacific League this year. They lead the league in team scoring with 370 (SoftBank is next with 323), run differential at a whopping +106 (Seibu has a +32), batting average (.284), and home runs (72). The pitching staff has done its job too, holding the opposition to 264 runs in 67 games. Lotte has fallen behind Seibu in the standings, but if they keep this up, as they have through the first three months of the season, they’ll be in the race all year.

I’ve only watched two Lotte games this year (a Yuki Karakawa start against Seibu early in the year, and a game against SoftBank prior to interleague), so I’m not the best guy to analyze Lotte’s success (I would recommend this guy, actually), but I won’t let that stop me. Here are a few observations.

In the lineup…

• Tsuyoshi Nishioka and Toshiaki Imae are healthy and hitting like the Tsuyoshi and Imae we all know and love.
• Takashi Ogino was having a great rookie year until he went down with a knee injury that required surgery.
• Everyone’s getting on base: Lotte has five of the Pacific League’s 10 best OBP’s lead by Tadahito Iguchi with a robust .450. Iguchi is leading Japan in walks with 59; no one else has more than 42 and no one else in the Pacific League has more than 35.
• With a .290/.372/.524 slash line, Kim Tae-Kyun has been the best Korean hitter we’ve seen in NPB since Lee Seun-Yeop’s heyday, and has already given Lotte more production from their foreign hitter slot than they got from anyone they had last year.

On the mound…

• Yasuhiko Yabuta has put up outstanding numbers in his return engagement, and SoftBank castoff Akichika is looks like an inspired pickup.
• Bill Murphy has moved into the rotation and won all six starts he’s made so far. I’m trying to think of the last time a suketto had any success as a starter with Lotte… Dan Serafini maybe?
• Yoshihisa Naruse is off to a strong start, with 95 K’s in 104.1 innings so far to go along with a 2.95 ERA. I could see him setting new career highs in innings and strikeouts this year.
• Hiro Kobayashi has made a successful transition to the closer role, picking up 12 saves so far this season.

There are a few minor question marks…

• Ogino won’t be back until the All-Star game, in late July. His return should be a huge boost.
• Yuki Karakawa has been out since taking a line drive off his right hand on May 13, and his return is unclear.
• Without Karakawa, a rotation front three of Naruse, Murphy and Shunsuke Watanabe is a shade below the front three’s of Seibu, Nippon Ham, and Rakuten.
• Spare a thought for Shunichi Nemoto, who was replaced in the lineup by Iguchi despite a solid 2008 season, and has fallen into no-man’s land.

The Pacific League is pretty well-balanced this year, so you never know what will happen, but Lotte’s chances look pretty good.

Some of the search engine queries that wind up on this site are phrased as questions. Not all of the questions are answered directly by the content on the site, so I thought I’d answer a few of the more interesting ones here.

– Who is the shortest person in the npb?

This one has shown up multiple times. My best guess is Rakuten infielder Kensuke Uchimura, who is 163 cm or 5’4.

– Where does Hayato Doue play?

Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks.

– Who is the best hitter in Japan today?

Today, I would say it’s Kazuhiro Wada, who is tearing up the Central League to the tune of .356/.454/.662 with 17 hr and 44 rbi.

– What pitches does Ryota Igarashi throw?

Mostly a fastball and a splitter. I wrote a profile of him last year, haven’t seen enough of him with the Mets to know if it’s still accurate.

– What is a 4 shake ball?

A knuckleball thrown with a forkball grip. See here for more.

Who does Tadahito Iguchi play baseball for in 2010?

Chiba Lotte Marines.

Who did the SoftBank Hawks trade for Roberto Petagine?

No one, Petagine was signed as a free agent.

Who is Dioni Soriano?

The latest graduate of the Hiroshima Carp’s Dominican Academy to reach NPB. I wrote a little bit about him over at FanGraphs.

Or Saturday afternoon, depending on what time zone you’re in.

Got a live feed here of the Dragons vs the Giants. I’ve also updated the NPB Live page.

Watch live video from chihling on Justin.tv

A couple of velocity charts this week jumped out at me:

• Eulogio de la Cruz made his Yakult debut on June 15, and showed great velocity but bad command. Case in point: he hit 158 kmph on the gun, but it was on a fastball in that dirt.
• Another Yakult pitcher, Yoshinori, hit Rakuten with a barrage of fastballs last Sunday. He too showed strong velocity, but had very few strikeouts to show for it.

Well, that was fast. NPB Tracker has now been online for two years and a day. The anniversary slipped right by me; I only noticed this morning when I was telling an old friend that I’ve had the site for “about two years”.

Though I didn’t publish as much as I did in year one, there where definitely some highlights, listed here in no particular order:

• Getting to meet Deanna and Westbay-san in Tokyo.
• Getting the data site online, which I never planned to do when I started the site.
• Joining the FanGraphs crew, whom I’ve already learned a lot from.
• Making my print debut with Rotowire.
• Ryo Shinkawa graduating from the site and joining the Red Sox.

I’d like to say thanks to everyone who reads the site, especially those who take the time to leave comments, for making it fun for me to write. And also thank you to all the other bloggers and journalists out there, who provide inspiration and reference my work. I’m looking forward to seeing what year three brings.

Today is the Braves’ deadline to trade or promote former Hanshin Tiger Chris Resop. Resop’s stint in Japan was not a successful one, and to show how much he’s improved his results, I’ve compiled his Japan stats here. Apologies for the formatting, which is worse than Resop’s 2008 numbers. Note that because Resop spent the entirity of 2009 with Hanshin’s farm team, detailed numbers were not readily available and I didn’t go out of my way to find them.

Chris has earned another shot at MLB with a dynamite first half in 3A, and I wish him the best of luck with his impending promotion.

News and notes from around NPB, mostly in Japanese this time around.

• Orix took this year’s Interleague title, and a with it a 50m yen ($500k) award for the team. The emergent T-Okada was credited as the hero of yesterday’s game, but stalwart slugger Alex Cabrera was 3-4 with two rbi’s and is hitting .394 on the season. Orix is now 32-30-1 in what I thought would be a rebulding season.
• Hichori Morimoto has racked up enough service time for international free agency. When asked about it, he responded in jest “I’m interested, you know, in America”, then added, “I care about how other teams evaluate me, but playing for the Fighters is the best.”
• Hisashi Iwakuma has also qualified for domestic free agency, but that’s a bit of a non-event given that he’s already under contract with Rakuten for next season. He’s represented by IMG, though, and I think he’ll make the MLB move after 2011, assuming he remains healthy and effective.
• The Giants called up Taishi Ohta, and he made his first professional start on the 12th, going 0-3. He had another 0-3 outing on the 13th.
• Yu Darvish’s June 12 start is archived on Justin.tv. Catch it while you can.
• Akinori Otsuka attended a Padress-Mariners game over the weekend, and still wants to make an MLB comeback. It won’t be this year though. Aki had his third elbow (ひじ) surgery this past January, and has been playing catch for about three weeks. He’s hoping to be throwing at full strength in October. Aki is 38, so a comeback is a tall order given his injury history. Keiichi Yabu returned to MLB ball at a older age, but he was coming back from ineffectiveness, not injuries.
• Here’s one in English: veteran NPB writer Jim Allen takes a look at Lotte’s hot first half.

And finally, off-topic content this week inspired by the South African-hosted World Cup: Emeka Okafor’s Timbuktu Chronicles and Appfrica, a blog site run by an Ugundan tech incubator. These outstanding blogs highlight areas of African resourcefulness and innovation.

Update Saturday morning, Pacific Daylight Time: Darvish did make a return to the mound, and a triumphant one, with a line of 7 IP 7 K 1 BB 3 H 0 ER and the win. And he only threw 84 pitches, his lowest total this season. His fastball velocity was a little more variable than normal but the results were there. Nippon Ham finally scored a few runs for Darvish, and won 9-0.

Edit Friday night, Pacific Daylight Time: commenter “Tannin” pointed out that I confused the Japanese word for knee (“hiza”) with the word for elbow (“hiji”). It was in fact Darvish’s knee that kept him off the mound, which is obviously way less of a concern than his elbow would have been. The commentary about Darvish’s workload still applies, so this post wasn’t a total waste. I just wish I had caught the mistake before a few thousand readers saw it.

I didn’t post anything beyond a tweet about this at the time, but Yu Darvish missed his scheduled start last week with discomfort in his throwing elbow right knee. Darvish is apparently ok, and he’s due to make his next start on June 12th against Chunichi. According to Daily Sports, Nippon Ham is going to settle on a six-day rotation, so we can expect to see Darvish every Saturday.

Darvish has a track record of heavy workloads, but this year he’s taken it up a notch. According to the data I collected (which is not totally complete for last year, but is for this year), Darvish’s busiest outing last year was his 135-pitch start against Rakuten on August 7. This season, Darvish has thrown 135 or more pitches in six of his 11 starts, topping out at 156 on May 8, also against Rakuten. And that start was preceded by a 150-pitch outing against Seibu.

Nippon Ham seems to be concerned about this pattern, and early in the season announced that they would limit Darvish to 120 pitches per start. At the time, I thought this was a very forward-thinking move for an NPB team, particularly since it could have the positive side-effect of forcing Darvish to become more economical with his pitches. They haven’t had the discipline to stick with the limit though, as he’s surpassed 120 pitches in six of his eight starts made since the announcement.

Darvish has been relatively healthy throughout his pro career, with the exception of the time he missed late last season with a miscellany of injuries. He’s shown to be capable of going deep in to starts, as evinced by the fact that he tends to maintain consistent velocity in his outings. But given his workload in the past and in particular this season, it’s hard not to raise an eyebrow when the phrase ‘elbow discomfort’ is uttered (though in this case it wasn’t). It’ll be interesting to see how he’s used this season, particularly if Nippon Ham fails to get into contention for a playoff spot.

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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