Getting to the root of the problem
This is the second part of a series centering around my interview with a leading Tommy John surgeon in Japan, Dr. Kozo Furushima. Dr. Kozo Furushima Amid all the talk…
Elementary steps in war against injury
This past week, the civil war brewing within Japanese baseball over rules to protect pitchers' arms heated up. On Thursday, the Japan Rubber Baseball Association adopted 70-pitch limits for the…
Strike while the iron is hot
While we're on the subject of called balls and strikes in Nippon Professional Baseball, @Student_murmur has done a nice study in Delta Graphs about how the count affects umpires calls,…
Problems with punch-outs
The other day HERE I tried to answer the question whether foreign hitters in Nippon Professional Baseball have larger strike zones or not by looking at the percentage of strikeouts…
Not pulling your leg
The big news out of Nippon Professional Baseball's spring training on Tuesday was that Daisuke Matsuzaka is suffering from right-shoulder inflammation. What's unusual is that his club, the Central League's…
The “Gaijin Zone”
A building block of anecdotal descriptions about Japanese baseball is the "Gaijin strike zone." This implies that foreign hitters in NPB have wider strike zones. A look at play-by-play data…
The man behind the curtain
Tsutomu Jinji, Ph.D., shown at December's baseball winter meetings in Las Vegas. Yusei Kikuchi gets all the credit for remaking himself on the mound the past three seasons. But when…
Japan’s “Major League”
This is a collection of anecdotes that don't explain but do give some context behind the Chiba Lotte Marines' bizarre 2009 season. The year an owner threw a season With…
NPB’s rites of spring
Training basics For those of you unfamiliar with spring training in Japan, here are a few things to look out for as you dive into the news coming out of…
Senga strikes out
Right-hander Kodai Senga said he made no progress in persuading the SoftBank Hawks to allow him to move to the major leagues through the posting system following his dinner with…
