NPB Tracker

This year’s Sawamura Award selection committee agreed with me and choose Rakuten ace Hisashi Iwakuma as the recipient of this year’s award. Here’s a YouTube clip of the game that really put Iwakuma over the top.

Runner-up Yu Darvish had an outstanding year, meeting all seven guidelines for selection, but in the end Iwakuma’s win total and slightly better era won out. Said selection committee member Choji Murata: “Darvish is a pitcher who can take the award again from next year”.

I’ve been piling up random bullet points for over a month now, so rather than sift threw ’em I thought I’d throw them all out there and let you decide what’s interesting. 

Japanese Articles

• Chunichi is preparing a multi-year offer for closer HItoki Iwase. I think the Dragons’ offer could actually be comparable to the offers he’ll get from MLB teams.
• The SoftBank Hawks’ billionaire owner Masayoshi Son attended three Hawks games this year, the last of which was on Sept 28.
• Kazuhiro Kiyohara got quite a send-off around NPB. In his last game against Seibu, he was treated to a dou-age* by the opposing Lions, the team he began his pro career with. A few days earlier he struck out in his final appearance in Kobe’s beautiful Skymark Stadium.
• I stumbled across a Yu Darvish promotion on some kind of frozen breafast food.

English Articles

• Mainichi has an interesting piece on Phillies manager Charlie Manuel’s time as a player in Japan.

Work and my upcoming home move have settled down a little bit, so it’s time to catch up on a little NPB bloggin’. There’s no immediate end in sight to my hectic schedule, but I’m hoping to be able to get back to posting 2-3 times a week. 

Let’s start the comeback with a look a this year’s race for the Sawamura Award. With apologies to Satoshi Komatsu and Colby Lewis, two pitchers have clearly separated themselves from the pack: Nippon Ham’s Yu Darvish and Rakuten’s Hisashi Iwakuma. Darvish’s regular season is over, while Iwakuma still has another start left, but we have enough numbers to compare. Here’s my fairly simplistic look at them head-to-head.

Selected Rate Stats

Darvish has an edge here, but it’s minimal. Both pitchers have sub-2.00 ERAs, sub-1.00 WHIPs, and 4+ K/BB ratios. Darvish has struck more guys out, but Iwakuma has better controlled the home run ball. Both guys have been outstanding by these metrics.

Selected Accumulated Stats

Iwakuma has a big edge here in hitting the 20 win mark, becoming the first NPB 20-game winner since Kazumi Saito and Kei Igawa both did it in 2003. This is a particularly phenomenal achievement for a guy pitching for a last place team.

Darvish has been a workhorse, throwing 200 innings in just 24 starts. It should be noted, however,  that he threw two meaningless innings in Nippon Ham’s 17-0 drubbing of Rakuten in the Fighters’ last regular season game to reach 200.

The WHIP numbers shown above give an indication of how unhittable these guys have been this year, and these totals underscore that further. Despite Iwakuma’s remarkable HR allowed total, overall Darvish has been even less hittable.

The Sawamura Award

The recipient of the Sawamura Award is decided by a panel of great NPB pitchers, who in part base their decision on the following criteria (courtesy of Wikipedia):

• Games started: 25
• Wins: 15
• Complete games: 10
• W/L Percentage: .600
• Innings Pitched: 200
• ERA: 2.50
• Strikeouts: 150

There’s been lots of news about Junichi Tazawa over the last day or two, but I could use a break for him so I’m going to write about other stuff. If you’re looking for info on Tazawa, check out the stuff I’ve posted over the last few days.

On to the bullet points…

English Articles:

• David Watkins of Tsubamegun takes an in-depth look at the Yakult Swallows lineup changes this year.
• Chris Resop started his first game for the Hanshin Tigers, going 5 innings and giving up 2 runs. He didn’t figure in the decision.
• Resop’s old boss, Frank Wren, just got back from a trip to Japan.
• Deanna has photos from yet another Lotte farm team game, including shots of heralded rookie Yuuki Karakawa.
• Apparently Hideki Okajima isn’t that crazy about life in America.
• Michael Westbay of JapaneseBaseball.com has started up a podcast called Pro Yakyu this Week.

Japanese Articles:

• The SoftBank Hawks played with the Yahoo Dome’s retractable roof open for the first time in nine years on Sept 11. Hari-kaasan has more pics.
• Video highlights of Yu Darvish’s most recent win have been posted to YouTube. Darvish struck out 13 over 8 innings.
• Hanshin beat Yakult on Sept 10 with a walk-off walk.
• Tuffy Rhodes and Alex Cabrera both homered in the surging Buffaloes 6-1 win over Lotte. Orix is now just 4 games behind Seibu for 1st place in the Pacific League. Vote Daijiro Ohishi for Manager of the Year in ’08.

Going with all Japanese articles for today’s bullet points, since I haven’t really read anything in English for the last couple of days.

Japanese Articles:

• A Japanese blogger has set up a site to protest Senichi Hoshino’s prospective involvement in next year’s World Baseball Classic. The movement seems to be spreading, as banners like this and this are beginning to appear elsewhere in the Japanese blogoshpere. Update: The campaign won’t have to continue on very long as Hoshino has already said he won’t accept the job if it’s offered.
• The Hiroshima Carp will be be wearing throwback uniforms from the team’s late 70’s/early 80’s golden age. Carp Blog has a pic and good graphics in general.
• Chunichi Dragons blog Negative Dragons reported that 2nd baseman Masahiro Araki will not excercise his right to become a free agent and stay in Nagoya. Sponichi reported the same news the following day. I’ve updated the 2009 NPB free agent list.
• At the risk of stoking the flames: scouts from six major league teams including the Yankees watched Yu Darvish shut down the Lions on Sept 9 (English Box Score courtesy of JapaneseBaseball.com). I guess this is what Gene Michael was doing in Japan. Sanspo re-iterated that “Darvish has not expressed any intent of going to MLB and is affectionate toward his team, but MLB teams won’t leave him alone“.
• Chunichi pitcher Hitoki Iwase become the first NPB closer to record four consecutive 30+ save seasons.

Question for bullet points readers: do you enjoy the Japanese content or the English content more? What topics do you find most interesting?

Back on to current events… here’s today’s collection from around the ‘net.

Japanese Articles

• Yu Darvish made his first start since returning from the Olympics, throwing 96 pitches over eight innings of one-hit ball.
• Kazumi Saito has completed the US stint of his rehab and has returned to Japan to finish up. I wonder if we’ll see him in a game this season…
• Updates on Hanshin’s three foreign-born relief pitchers: Jeff Williams was dropped to the farm team for rest after two bad outings; Chris Resop is also on the farm team getting a look as a starter, but meanwhile Scott Atchison has been holding down the fort with 10 consecutive scoreless outings.
• Chunichi Dragons owner Junnosuke Shirai has suggested that rather than rely on Senichi Hoshino for next year’s WBC team, Japan goes with the manager of this year’s NPB champion.

English Articles

• Deanna posted a great interivew with Rakuten slugger Fernando Seguignol. For anyone who hasn’t seen Deanna’s site, I highly recommend it — she gets some excellent interviews.
• Koji Uehara returned to Yomiuri’s starting rotation last week and picked up a win.
• The Softbank Source reports on last weekend’s Hawks-Marines series, where all three games ended in ties. This the first time in NPB history that’s happened.

It’s been another busy week and I haven’t had much time for baseball, so let’s take a break from the NPB current events and take a look at some pitching.

If you’ve read this blog more than once, you might have observed that it’s very pitching-centric. This isn’t by accident. I think pitching is the most interesting part of the game — pitchers control the pace of the game, and there’s so much variability in styles and approaches. This second point is especially true in Japan, where there are fewer true power pitchers, and more guys rely on breaking stuff. Here are some of the more interesting examples:

• Satoru Komiyama throws a pitch he invented called the shake. He describes the grip as forkball without applying pressure from the thumb, but to me looks something like a split-finger knuckleball. Komiyama never throws the shake faster than about 55 mph in the video I linked to.
• Masaki Hayashi has great movement on his slider. Unfortunately he’s rarely healthy.
• Shinji Imanaka won a Sawamura Award in the early 90’s with his slow curve. He had a short career and was pretty much done by the time I started watching Japanese baseball, but here’s a highlight of him shutting down Hideki Matsui.
• A current curveballer is Orix righty Chihiro Kaneko. His curve has big movement like Imanaka’s, but he throws it a bit harder.
• Obligatory Yu Darvish mention: Darvish has probably the best variety of stuff in Japan right now, mixing in 6-7 different pitches. Here’s a video that focuses on the development of his changeup, comparing it to his fastball (00:26) and slider (00:32). Skip to 01:48 for changeup footage.
• When Daisuke Matsuzaka came to MLB, he brought the legend of the gyroball with him. Matsuzaka admits that he doesn’t throw it intentionally, but here’s a video of him throwing a slider with gyro properties. However, former Hanshin Tigers ace Tetsuro Kawajiri* is an accredited gyroballer and this video shows him strking out Jay Payton and Carlos Delgado with it in the 2000 Japan-US All-Star Series. Note how Payton and Delgado swing under the pitch.
• And finally, Ichiro was a pitcher in high school and was brought in to face Hideki Matsui with two outs in the 9th inning of the 1996 All-Star game. He drew cheers by immediately hitting 91 mph on gun, but Central League manager Katsuya Nomura pinch hit Shingo Takatsu for Matsui and took a bit of the edge off this legendary moment.

*footnote on Kawajiri: Kawajiri pitched great in that Japan-US series. After that he wanted to be posted to play in MLB, but Hanshin refused. Tigers teammate Tsuyoshi Shinjo also represented Japan in that All-Star series and played well, but left as a free agent to join the Mets. Kawajiri faded into the background and was eventually traded. Neither player was around the next time the Tigers fielded a winning team, which was in 2003.

Japan is getting pounded 8-4 by America as I type this… what a disappointing Olympics for Team Hoshino. Still, Korea and Cuba asserted themselves as winning countries, so I think it’s not a bad result for the game of baseball.

Let’s move on to the bullet points. I’ve got a couple stored up from the last few days.

Japanese Articles:

• Hitoki Iwase got lit up to the tune of a 13.52 ERA in 4 2/3 innings of Olympic competition, taking 3 losses. On the plus side, his 7:1 K:BB ratio was strong. Nikkan Sports has the stats published for all the Olympic teams (Japanese only).
• I found a great blog entry about various NPB batters’ stances. Click the å‹•ç”» link above each image to see video highlights on YouTube. My recommendations are Sadaharu Oh and Hitoshi Taneda.
• Colby Lewis made his return to the Hiroshima Carp on August 21, his first start since July 1. He held Hanshin scoreless in 5 2/3 but didn’t pick up the win.
• Nagisa Arakaki set a new Japan record with five wild pitches in one game, including three in the fourth inning. This guy has great stuff and would dominate if he could do something about his control.
• Yu Darvish is heading back to Japan and scheduled to start on September 2 against Softbank.
• Sales of Kazuhiro Kiyohara goods are up 1000% since he announced his retirement.
• Unlike their male counterparts, the Japan woman’s softball team took home the gold. I’m mentioning it here because Japan starter Yukiko Ueno pitched back-to-back complete games on consecutive days in the knock-out round, and according to this article threw 413 pitches over the two days. I find that number very hard to believe, even though the semi-final was an extra-inning game.

English Articles:

• Deanna posted some excellent photos of a recent Marines-Eagles game on her blog.
• Richard Deitsch picks on Senichi Hoshino in his Olympics Quote of the Day.

Well, in the time it took me to type this, Team USA sealed it’s victory over Japan and clinched the bronze medal. Well, the WBC is only nine months away…

Well, Japan squeaked into the medal round of the Olympics with a 4-3 record in group play. Japan is the 4th seed and draws top-ranked Korea in the opening game of the medal round.

Japan blew out Taiwan, the Netherlands and China, edged Canada, and lost to Cuba, Korea, and the United States. Japan beat the teams it needed to beat, and lost to the stronger competitors. The lose to Cuba was the only game that Japan didn’t have a chance to win, mostly due to Yu Darvish’s disappointing performance (5 earned runs, 12 baserunners in 4 IP).

The losses to Korea and the USA were closer — both games were tied until the late innings. Japan had Korea tied 2-2 going into the 9th, but Chunichi closer Hitoki Iwase gave up 3 runs in 1 1/3 IP to take the loss. Simon from jhockey does a much better job breaking down the game than I could possibly do here.

Japan and the US took a scoreless tie into the 11th, when the lottery tie-breaker rule kicked in. Japan left Iwase on the hill for a second inning and he gave up 4 runs. Japan responded with 2 in the bottom of the inning but that obviously wasn’t enough to win. I’ll have to admit that I didn’t see Iwase pitch in the Olympics, so I don’t know what kind of impression he’ll have made on the many scouts present.

I’m a little disappointed to see Japan and Korea play in the first game of the medal round. I don’t really want to see either of these teams go home without a medal, but one of them will (what was I thinking — the loser will have a shot at the bronze). A Japan-Korea gold medal game would have been phenomenal but that isn’t going to happen.

I’ll close out this post with some random Olympic-related notes and articles I’ve picked up over the last week. These links are all to Japanese articles:

• Looks like manager Senichi Hoshino might be leaning toward starting lefty Toshiya Sugiuchi against Korea. “Korea is weak against southpaws,” said Hoshino.
• Play continued after three outs in the sixth inning of the US game. The last batter for the US popped out to center, but the teams failed to change sides and pitcher Masahiro Tanaka threw the first pitch pitch to the next batter. Then Hoshino heard someone shout “change” from the audience and went out to complain to the umpire, who called the inning complete.
• Hoshino got himself ejected in the ninth inning of the Cuba game for arguing balls and strikes on Tomoya Satozaki’s check swing, then picked up a $2000 fine for failing to leave the field.
• Outfielder Atsunori Inaba credited his game-winning home run to being able to eat McDonald’s, which he called a “mood lifter”.
• Yu Darvish and Masahiro Tanaka combined for seven scoreless innings against America after shaving their heads.
• Koji Uehara seems to have recovered his forkball and pitched well against Canada.
• The Major League scouts also Yakult outfielder Norichika Aoki on their watch list as well as Chunichi pitcher and Taiwan representative Wei-Yin Chen.

And finally, John Donovan shares his picks for Japan’s “Dream Team” simply by adding Japanese Major Leagurs to the existing Olympic roster.

Blogging is immensely popular in Japan — as of April 2007 Japanese was the #1 most “blogged in” language according to Technorati. I haven’t found any newer data, but then again I haven’t looked too hard either. Moving along to the point, several NPB players maintain blogs and I would like to make a selected few a little more accessible to English-speaking fans.

• Yu Darvish celebrated a birthday, and received 3000 well-wishing comments on his blog.
• Chiba Lotte submariner Shunsuke Watanabe last updated his blog on August 13, noting that it felt good to work up a sweat in the outdoor Chiba Marine Stadium as opposed to Osaka Dome, while lamenting the struggles of Japan’s Olympic team and his Marines.
• Speedy Hiroshima Carp centerfielder Masato Akamatsu hit his first home run in a while and was nervous in the Hero Interview that followed, the first of his career. He also included a picture of him with a weird looking stuffed animal in this post.
• “Hama no Bancho” Daisuke Miura poses for a picture with Osaka Castle and admits to being a “castle maniac”.
• Kazumi Saito is rehabbing a shoulder injury in Arizona, and fortunately for us has plenty of time to write in his blog. Saito’s blog definitely offers the best insight into what his life is like. A recent post describes his rehab schedule, which is pretty interesting — he has an alternating workout schedule, which requires him to get up no later than 6:15 AM. He has a methodical attitude about it: “For every result, there is a process. I think results without a process cannot be maintained.” Saito seems to be enjoying his time in Arizona. I’ll have to write an entry on his blog alone sometime.

Some of the foreign NPB players maintain blogs as well. I think that topic is worthy of it’s own post so look out for it soon.