NPB Tracker

My post on foreign players in the draft last year went over well, and I had meant to publish an update for 2009 prior to this year’s draft, but the gods of time weren’t on my side. In any case it’s not too late, so here’s a look at some players who brought a multicultural air to this year’s draft.

Pedro Okuda: Okuda is a third-generation Japanese Brazilian who came to Japan to play baseball. He made a name for himself in the 2007 Koshien tournament with a walk-off home run, but still didn’t get picked in yesterday’s draft.

Maike Magario: Magario is another Brazilian, though one who has grown up for most of his life in Japan. I haven’t seen much of Magario, but his build reminds me a little bit of Shawn Green. Yakult took Magario with their first ikusei pick. Note that Yakult also took Brazilian Rafael Fernandez in the ikusei draft last year, and operates an academy in Brazil.

Juanyoni Allan: Yet another Brazilian, I know even less about Allan than the previous two players – I don’t even know if I have the Romanization of his name correct. Draft reports indicates that he’s a big kid (196 cm, 100km; 6’5, 220lbs) who came to Japan with the goal of becoming a pro ballplayer. The report also says that he’s a power hitter who has seen time on the mound, but struggled with his command. Allan was not selected in the draft.

John Clayton Unten: clearly the best prospect of this bunch, Clayton was born to an American father and Japanese mother and attended high school in Okinawa. Shukan Baseball compares him to Seibu starter Takayuki Kishi, which I take a real compliment. Nippon Ham has become known for acquiring half-Japanese players (Yu Darvish, Romash Tasuku Dass, previously Micheal Nakamura as well), and indeed the Fighters drafted Unten in the fourth round.

Deanna has a full breakdown of who went where that goes into far more detail than I’ll get to. You’ll see more from me on the draft, though.

Despite the projections and comments in the media, ‘only’ six teams selected Yusei Kikuchi in the first round of this year’s draft, with the Seibu Lions winning the drawing and the rights to his NPB services. Hanshin, Yakult, Chunichi, Nippon Ham and Rakuten were the other teams that selected Kikuchi.

With half the league going after Kikuchi, the other six teams all got their picks uncontested. Orix (Shuichi Furukawa) and Hiroshima (Takeru Imamura) made pretty good picks in my opinion.

That’ll be all for me tonight, Gwynar is live-tweeting the draft and some nutbar is broadcasting it on justin.tv, though he has a bad habit of shouting into the mic and displaying an Excel sheet rather than the draft coverage.

The NPB draft is tomorrow, and no shock here, but Yusei Kikuchi will be the story of the first round. So far seven teams have announced an intent to select Kikuchi in the first round. Here’s the breakdown:

• Yokohama: Yoshitomo Tsutsugo
• Hiroshima: Takeru Imamura
• Hanshin: Kikuchi
• Yakult: Kikuchi
• Chunichi: Kikuchi
• Yomiuri: Hisayoshi Chono
• Orix: unannounced (Kikuchi)
• Chiba Lotte: Kikuchi
• Seibu: Kikuchi
• SoftBank: unannounced (Kikuchi)
• Rakuten: Kikuchi
• Nippon Ham: Kikuchi

SoftBank has been very quiet on Kikuchi, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them sneak up on Hiroshima and pick Imamura instead of trying their luck on Kikuchi. Orix has talked quite a bit about Kikuchi and I do think they’ll pick him. In any event Kikuchi has a realistic shot at breaking Hideo Nomo’s record of being selected by eight teams in the draft. But when he’s selected, there will still be a number of good prospects on the table, so we should see multiple drawings.

For a refresher on how it works, please see our primer on the NPB draft.

Multiple reports out of Japan are confirming that Kenji Johjima’s NPB return will indeed be with the Hanshin Tigers. It took two rounds of negotiations for the Tigers and Johjima to work out a deal.

Sports Hochi Osaka is saying its a four-year deal, with an estimated value of 2.5 bn JPY ($27.25m at today’s exchange rate). No one else has reported that figure so we’ll see if it winds up being accurate. If it’s true, it’s a pretty nice deal for Joh. An official press conference will be scheduled shortly.

Sayonara Bobby, konichiwa Greg Maddux?

Maybe. The Chiba Lotte Marines are planning to invite the future Hall of Famer to spring training next season as a temporary pitching instructor, somewhat similar to what Orix did with Hideo Nomo last year. Sponichi notes that with his legendary control and excellent circle change, Maddux is a great role model on how to get by without velocity for Japanese pitchers. I’d tweak that just a bit and say he’s a great example for any pitcher.

Lotte’s intent is to reach out to Maddux through former Padres teammate and current Marine Tadahito Iguchi. I hope this comes together, it would be great to see Maddux back in the game.

Sanspo is speculating on Akinori Iwamura’s future, and this time it doesn’t involve a move to the Hanshin Tigers.

Aki has a $4.85m option (with a $250k buyout) for next season that must be exercised or declined within a day after the conclusion of the World Series. The idea is that the Ray’s would pick up the option and then move Iwamura in a sign-and-trade style deal. The speculation is that the likely destination for Iwamura would be the Dodgers, who will have an opening at second base with Orlando Hudson not returning. Sanspo asked Ned Colletti about Iwamura, and he gave a boilerplate “I can’t talk about players from other teams” non-comment.

We already stuck a blurb about this up on Twitter,but Hanshin Tigers reliever Scott Atchison is looking to make an MLB comeback next season.

Atchison was one of Hanshin’s top bullpen arms last year, posting a 1.70 era in 90 innings over 75 appearances. Hanshin wanted to bring him back next year, but according to reports, Atchison wanted to return to the States for family and lifestyle reasons. That he pitched well enough in 2009 to contend for a regular MLB bullpen spot couldn’t have hurt either.

Atchison last appeared in the majors in 2007 with San Francisco, and is primarily a fastball/slider pitcher. You can get a sense of how hard he throws on the NPB Tracker data site.

Kyodo News and reader Manzino beat me to it, but Yusei Kikuchi is staying in Japan. I’ll have more later in the evening.

(returns after a while)

It’s later in the evening, and here’s more.

This news doesn’t come as a surprise, as even though I had been reserving some skepticism, all the reports over the last few days said that he was staying in Japan. The quotes that are getting repeated by everyone are Kikuchi saying, “I want to be given the chance to play in Japan,” followed by “for now I’m closing the door to the Majors, and after becoming a top pitcher in Japan I want to take on the world.”

I’m glad to see this come to an end. The media frenzy was clearly starting to get to Kikuchi; he acknowledged developing a bad case of acne in the last couple of days and broke down during his press conference. Had he chosen to pursue MLB, the madness certainly would have continued until he signed with a team. I think it took a lot of guts for Kikuchi to challenge the norms even to the extent he did. He’s earned himself at least a footnote in baseball history for that.

Kikuchi is leaving some money on the table with this choice. ZakZak, a site that I normally don’t take too seriously, estimated that Kikuchi’s MLB offers would be in the $4-6m range. I thought that seemed a little high, but ZakZak points out that the top high school lefty in the 2009 MLB draft, Tyler Matzek of the Rockies, signed for $3.9m.

NPB is a clear winner here. Kikuchi’s drawing power is certainly higher having gone through this affair, which will benefit both the league and the team that drafts him. At the same time, it’s an opportunity for take a look in the mirror and look for new ways to compete for talent with MLB. Unlike last year with Junichi Tazawa, we saw NPB bend it’s own rules a little bit to try to keep Kikuchi around, rather than throw together a weak deterrent. It’ll remain to be seen how proactive they’ll be with the next guy that tries this.

Watch live video from waka02152000 on Justin.tv

As I uh, tweeted earlier in the day, Yusei Kikuchi has scheduled a press conference for October 25th at 11:00 am JST, just four days prior to the NPB draft.

The most recent reports out of Japan suggest that Kikuchi is going to start his professional career in Japan, but we’ve seen a pattern of Japanese media outlets hearing what they want to hear with regards to the highly-regarded lefty. But Nikkan Sports is usually pretty reliable, and they too have just published a report saying that Kikuchi is staying in Japan. So we’ll see what happens.