Premier 12 all-tournament team & 9th inning madness

 

The WBSC has named its all-tournament team for the inaugural Premier 12, which includes the Nippon Ham Fighters’ Shohei Otani (starting pitcher) and Sho Nakata (first baseman), while Yomiuri Giants shortstop Hayato Sakamoto was named the tournament’s outstanding defensive player.

Three days after third-place Japan blew a three-run lead to lose its semifinal to eventual champion South Korea, the smoke has yet to clear over manager Hiroki Kokubo’s game management.

Some question his removing Otani after 85 pitches over seven innings for two-time Pacific League strikeout leader Takahiro Norimoto, who had been very sharp in relief through the tournament.

Others, including my podcast partner, John E Gibson, question Kokubo leaving Norimoto, a starter with the Pacific League’s Rakuten Eagles, who dispatched the Koreans in the eighth on eight pitches, in to work the ninth — since that is the domain of closers. After having zero luck with Norimoto’s fastball in the eighth, South Korea’s hitters began getting good swings at his secondary pitches. Good swings and good luck. The worst pitch he threw was a forkball that missed up over the plate, a pitch that leadoff hitter Jeong Keun Woo smashed just inside the third-base line for an RBI double. You can see the video here.

After the game, Kokubo said, “I wanted to bring in (lefty) Yuki Matsui with runners on second and third. But Norimoto hit the next batter. If there had been a base open, I think Matsui would have had more margin for error.”

Huh? He had a base open before Norimoto’s pitch came close enough to Lee Yong Kyu’s elbow for the umpire to award the batter first base. Kokubo wanted Matsui in with a base open, and didn’t bring him in then to face the lefty Lee, but waited for a bases-loaded to bring in a 20-year-old with a history of spotty control who is playing for the national team for the first time. Matsui walked the only batter he faced to make it a one-run game. Lee Dae Ho, who has seen Fighters closer Hirotoshi Masui pitch for four years, did well to lay off a 1-1 fastball off the outside corner before making  contact on a forkball over the outer half of the plate for a two-run single.

Norimoto’s control was horrible to start the inning, but he made two decent pitches that were hit for singles before Jeong’s double. Norimoto was part of the plan, no problem. But Kokubo wasn’t prepared for what he might need if the inning got out of control early, as it did.

Kokubo had four guys on his roster who close out games for a living, and a starter, submariner Kazuhisa Makita who has been deadly in relief, and none were ready when Kokubo could have used them the most.

Premier 12 or Premie 12?

The biggest moment of the Premier 12, South Korea’s stunning semifinal win over Japan at Tokyo Dome.

A pal referred to the Premier 12 as the Premie 12. Which kind of makes sense.

The tournament, which concluded Saturday night at Tokyo Dome, is living, breathing, andworth seeing. But it’s also underdeveloped and in need of love and care if it is to grow into a part of fans’ lives.

The tournament, organized by the World Baseball Softball Confederation, brings together teams from the 12 top national federations in the WBSC’s rankings. Two, six-team groups played a total of 30 group games for four quarterfinal berths.

Japan, which has turned its national team into a business (NPB Enterprises) with a full-time manager, Hiroki Kokubo, has had this tournament on its radar for years. The WBSC’s inability to negotiate a deal with MLB meant no players on MLB 40-man rosters were eligible to play, meaning nations with strong domestic leagues such as Japan and South Korea had an advantage.

Although Japan failed to reach the final due to a ninth-inning, four-run meltdown against South Korea at Tokyo Dome in Thursday’s semifinal. Kokubo, who was named to manage Japan in 2013 with no managing or coaching experience, carried four NPB closers on his roster but none were warm when South Korea’s first two hitters reached base in the ninth.

The 4-3 victory by manager Kim In Sik’s team over a previously undefeated Japan team was a mirror image of South Korea’s effort in the 2006 WBC. That year, Kim’s squad beat Japan twice en route to a 6-0 record through two rounds only to lose eventual champion Japan in a semifinal that was a scoreless tie through six innings. That result was much closer than Japan’s 10-6 win over Cuba in the final, when Japan led 6-1 after five innings.

Japan mauled Mexico 11-1 in the third-place game, while South Korea socked the United States 8-0 in the final to grab the gold.

As with the 2006 WBC, the Japan-South Korea semifinal was the tournament’s big game, as was their final at Dodger Stadium in 2009, when Yu Darvish blew the lead in relief after a strong start by Hisashi Iwakuma only to have Japan win it on a two-run, 10th-inning single by Ichiro Suzuki.

Overall, the games have been entertaining.

Shohei Otani hit 100 miles per hour in both of his impressive starts against South Korea and finished with 21 strikeouts in 13 scoreless innings.

The attendance was abysmal except in games played by Japan or Taiwan — or the final which was the second game of a doubleheader which many Japan supporters stayed to watch. The slick website was outsourced and, according to a WBSC spokesman, designed to support 15,000 visitors at a time, instead of the 1 million trying to log in.

Given the popularity of international soccer, it is possible to see how international baseball can capture imaginations and create a massive new market in the coming years. It’s not nearly there yet, but at some point the marginal value of 20 days of league play in a long season could be outweighed by a two-week international break in which national teams compete in front of huge summer crowds around the northern hemisphere and attract worldwide TV audiences.

Prior to the tournament opener on Nov. 8 at Sapporo Dome, Kim said he wanted the world to know how good the games were between his country and Japan, and the Premier 12 allowed him to deliver.