NPB Tracker

The prime minister of Japan, Yukio Hatoyama is throwing the first pitch in Pittsburgh before he gets down to business at the Pittsburgh G-20 Summit.

Preparing to throw a strike right down the pipe, he has been practicing with former Pittsburgh Pirate Masumi Kuwata. The prime minister received a baseball cap and jersey from Kuwata and started warming up. After the meeting, Hatoyama stated, “I appreciate the opportunity to play catch with the world’s Kuwata. Good things happen when you’re the prime minister.” This gives you an idea what type of icon Masumi Kuwata has been in the baseball world in Japan.

The web edition of the sports magazine Number featured a great article on the Giants’ ni-gun manager, Kaoru Okazaki, who is installing an American-style player development system.

Okazaki, who is currently the manager of the ni-gun team, developed his philosophy of coaching through his experience in the New York Yankees minor league system. The Yomiuri Giants have a strong relationship with the New York Yankees, through former Giant Hideki Matsui, and have utilized this relationship to allow their coaches to hone their craft in the Yankees minor league system.

Okazaki’s experience in the study abroad program for coaches has resulted in developing his philosophy, which has matched the needs of the Giants’ player development system really well. The most important difference he learned from the experience is the usage of ni-gun players.

In Japan, the farm system believes in winning as much as their NPB teams and using a pinch hitter in game deciding situation remains to be a norm. NPB baseball operations personnel has a mindset that if the farm system isn’t winning, the players aren’t developing. In that case the ni-gun manager will not be evaluated efficiently, which results in aggressive decisions.

However Okazaki learned a different style in the minor leagues where players rarely get taken out of games. The evaluation comes into place playing a whole game and not only from a portion of the game. Learning the importance of allowing the players  to play the whole game allowed Okazaki to have a better assessment on each player and decreases the possibility of missing out on players’ less obvious skills.

Even though there are players that need to be developed for certain situations (such as lefty-lefty match ups), Okazaki strongly believes in developing the overall skills in position players. The development of OF Tetsuya Matsumoto and INF Hayato Sakamoto has been hard to miss and if the Giants continue to have success in developing the young talents within their system, we could see a strong Giants team for a long time.

The relationship with NPB and MLB has been stronger as the years pass and many teams are maintaining working relationships across the Pacific. Opportunities for not only players, but managers, coaches and front office personnel to learn the different culture should be a huge benefit for both sides.

Starting from 2005, the Asia Series was once thought to be the next big tournament in Asian baseball. However after four years, the tournament was unable to catch sponsor’s interest and with financial difficulties it was decided to rethink the tournament this year.

Now as a replacement plan, the NPB and KBO have agreed to hold a Japan-Korea Club Championship on November 14th at Nagasaki at the Big N Stadium. The champions from the NPB and KBO will play to decide the champion of the two leagues.

The 2009 Baseball World Cup completed its first round and Japan has advanced to the second round with a 2-1 record:

Game 1: Japan vs. Great Britain, 9-7 win

Game 2: Japan vs. Croatia, 13-3 (7 innings) win

Game 3: Japan vs. Nicaragua, 8-4 loss

The offensive leaders of the first round for Japan were OF Keiji Ikebe (Shinnihon Sekiyu ENEOS) hitting .500 (6-12) with 2 doubles, 4RBI, 5R and two walks and OF Hisayoshi Chono (Honda) who had two hits in all three games batting .429 (6-14) with  2B, 3B, 2RBI and 4R.

With a 70-pitch limit in the first round, the depth of a team’s pitching staff can make or break games. The team ERA for Japan ranked 12th out of 20 teams in the first round with a 6.48ERA (25.0IP, 25H, 18ER, 8BB, 42K). However, Japan leads the tournament with 42 total strikeouts and the offense is tied for first with the least strikeouts with 11.

Japan is placed in Group G for the second round where four teams out of eight will be advancing to the next round. The group includes Mexico, Chinese Taipei, United States of America, Canada, Italy, Australia, and the Netherlands Antilles. Japan will be facing those opponents in order starting from Sunday, September 13th.

The 2009 Baseball World Cup can be viewed online on a pay-per-view basis for the tournament or pay-per-event.

The USA-Japan High School Baseball Games recently took place at the Urban Youth Academy Baseball Field in Compton, California. The exchange  started in 2006 and current Rakuten Golden Eagles ace Masahiro Tanaka was included on the Japan roster of the first series.

The three-game series between the two teams ended up without a real winner as it concluded with one win, one loss and one tie for both teams. The overall run total ended up with the Urban Youth Academy scoring 15 runs versus Japan’s 16 runs, so if you really want to determine a winner, Japan is your answer.

Game 1: Japan 8 – Urban Academy 5

Game 2: Japan 2- Urban Academy 2

Game 3: Japan 6- Urban Academy 8

The Japan team roster (link in Japanese) included a couple of top candidates for this year’s draft.

The Japanese roster for the 38th IBAF World Cup has been announced. The schedule overlaps with the college baseball fall league, so the 24 players on the roster are all from the industrial leagues.

Pitchers

• RHP Hirofumi Yamanaka (Honda Kumamoto) Video Clip
• LHP Atsushi Tanaka (Panasonic)
• LHP Takashi Saitoh (JR East)
• LHP Tetsu Anan (Nippon Tsuun) Video Clip
• RHP Rikiya Chikugawa (Honda)
• RHP  Hirotoshi Masui (Toshiba)
• RHP Tomohisa Ohtani (Toyota) Video Clip
• LHP  Hiroyuki Kamekawa (Mitsubushi Jyukou-Yokohama)
• RHP Eiichi Hirai (Fuji Jyukou)
• RHP Motoki Higa (Hitachi Seisakusho) Video Clip

Catchers

• Ryo Saeki (Honda)
• Kenji Suzuki (Nihon Tsuun)
• Go Yamaoka (Shinnihon Sekiyu ENEOS)

Infielders

• Ken Kume (Mitsubishi Jyukou-Nagasaki)
• Yoshiaki Sawamura (Nihon Tsuun)
• Shiro Mori (Panasonic) Video Clip
• Kentaro Miyazawa (Shinnihon Sekiyu ENEOS)
• Tsutomu Sasaki (Mitsubushi Jyukou- Yokohama)
• Kenichi Yokoyama (Mitsubushi Jyukou- Kobe)

Outfielders

• Hisayoshi Chono (Honda) Video Clip
• Yoshinobu Kotegawa (Honda)
• Keiji Ikebe (Shinnihon Sekiyu ENEOS)
• Ikuhiro Kiyota (NTT East Nippon)
• Sho Aranami (Toyota) Video Clip

Although attendance is taking a hit in the States due to the economy, attendance is actually going up in NPB, with both the Central and Pacific Leagues announcing numbers for the season so far. The Central League increased its overall attendance by 6.2% and the Pacific League increased its numbers by 1.7% to date, comparing year-over-year.

The biggest factor for the increase in the Central League comes from the Hiroshima Toyo Carp opening its new Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium this season, which resulted in a 48% increase in tickets purchased. On the other hand, problems on the field do not seem to be affecting fan interest in the Yokohama BayStars, with attendance up by 9.4%. For the Pacific League, the Orix Buffaloes are contributing the most to the increase, with a 7.1% rise from last year. The Seibu Lions haven’t been too shabby either, increasing their attendance by 7%. The biggest drop comes from the Chunichi Dragons in the Central League at -5.7% and Chiba Lotte Marines for the Pacific League with -5.5%.

The response we received to my recent article about pitch counts reaffirmed to me that the subject is of interest to baseball fans. To continue on the topic, I will take a look at the Koshien High School Tournament, which is known to be grueling for pitchers.

49 teams representing each prefecture (Tokyo and Hokkaido with two each) qualify for the single-elimination tournament. There was a total of 48 games in the tournament. In those 48 games, 48 complete games were thrown. Naoki Itoh from runner-up Nippon Bunri was the hardest-working pitcher this year, throwing five total complete games including the final and averaged for 131 pitches per game. In the 48 complete games thrown, pitchers averaged a total of 127.88 pitches per game.

The most grueling game of the tournament was thrown by Hayato Shoji (Tokoha Gakuen Tachibana), who already had two complete games in the books when he threw 211 pitches in a twelve inning game. Ironically, Shoji had the most efficient complete game as well, with a 98-pitch effort. The face of this year’s tournament, Yusei Kikuchi of Hanamaki Higashi, threw three complete games (124, 118, 125 pitches) and was looking for more until he started suffering from back pain.

The Koshien Tournament is always an emotional dramatic event, but is it safe for pitchers such as Shoji to be throwing that much? There are handful of promising pitchers in the Koshien Tournament who will make it to the professional stage and may develop into key players in NPB or even the majors. Even though the injury suffered by Kikuchi does not look serious, evaluating a limit on  pitch counts at a high school tournament where the top teams will play up to six games in the fifteen days should be something we should consider about thinking about the future that lies for the face of Japanese baseball.

Daily Sports has comments from Yusei Kikuchi suggesting that he’s decided on beginning his pro career in Japan: “It’ll be after I consult with my parents and manager, but I’m thinking domestic. In the future I think I’ll go to the Majors if I can, but after building my strength domestically.”

There were some hints on Kikuchi’s direction in yesterday’s news, but it seemed like observers basically took his comments and interpreted what the wanted to hear (Gen comments on this as well). If this most recent revelation is true, I think it’s the right choice for Kikuchi. I’ll go into once the story is confirmed.

We mentioned on twitter that Yu Darvish will have his turn in the rotation skipped to work on his form in Nippon Ham’s ni-gun practice facility, so in this post I will address how the ni-gun is structured in Japanese baseball. In the NPB, there is no Triple-A, Double-A, or Single-A; there is the ni-gun, meaning “second troop”. The top level, major league-equivalent teams are known as ichi-gun or “first troop”.

Two leagues exist in the NPB minor league system: the Eastern and the Western Leagues. The statistics and schedule are available in Japan here. Here are some details of the two leagues:

The Eastern League (Operated by the Central League)

• Composed of seven ni-gun teams: the Lotte Marines, BayStars, Giants, Fighters, Swallows, Lions and the Golden Eagles
• The league started in 1955 as the “Shin Nippon League” with the concept of NPB teams developing their young players
• The league was not able to continue due to financial reasons, but started back up again in 1961 with five teams, and added the Lions in 1979 and the Golden Eagles in 2005

The Western League (Operated by the Pacific League)

• Five ni-gun teams: the Dragons, Tigers, Buffaloes, Carp, and the Hawks
• The league was founded in 1952 as the “Kansai Farm League” with seven teams not affiliated with the NPB
• With teams leaving for the “Shin Nippon League,” the Western League turned to the NPB and reorganized as a minor league system for the then-14 teams in the NPB and seven teams would be part of the Western League
• The Western League lost the Lions due to the NPB team moving to Saitama and the merger of Buffaloes and Blue Wave led to the league contracting to five teams from 2005

With both leagues operating with an odd number of teams, the team with no game scheduled often plays against amateur industrial league teams belonging to the JABA (Japanese Amateur Baseball Association). Although the existence of these ni-gun teams are similar to minor leagues from a player development standpoint, the business behind the operations of these teams is completely different from the world of US minor league baseball.

Even though Minor League Baseball teams here in the States are affiliated with a MLB team they operate business as independent organizations. Minor League ball clubs has their own websites, stadiums, and in most cases their hometowns. However, the ni-gun differs in many ways compared to the operations of a minor league team as they usually do not operate independently and are run as more of a practice and development facility for the NPB teams. The only team name differing from its affiliated ball club is the Shonan Shirex and they don’t even have their own website.  A scene of announcing the starting lineup at the ballpark can be seen here and it is quite a bit different from an atmosphere you may be able to experience at a minor league game. Even though the Nippon Ham Fighters’ ni-gun team, playing at Kamagaya Stadium, is attempting to operate like a minor league ball club with promotions and events in a “Minor League” style, those types of ni-gun teams are still rare.

With only twelve teams at the professional level in NPB, there are few opportunities for players to make a living by just playing baseball. Teams are making efforts to provide playing time for young players like the Chiba Lotte Marines and the Yomiuri Giants working together forming a new team called Sirius for ikusei players and younger players to get game experience. However, with teams being limited in their roster spots and the future looking certain that there will not be a new team joining NPB anytime soon, independent leagues and ni-gun teams operating independently is one possible area of growth for professional baseball in Japan. If the number of professional teams increases in Japan outside of NPB, more players will have the opportunity to play at a higher level and the game will grow popularity around the country. Will the new development of independent leagues impact the state of professional baseball in Japan, and will ni-gun baseball begin evolving into a business of its own?