All posts by Jim Allen

sports editor for a wire service in Tokyo
Baseball, News, Paid Content

Tony Barnette and July’s Monthly MVPS

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Tony Barnette won his first monthly MVP award, photo courtesy of Deanna Rubin

Here is my latest original work in the Japan Times, although I have been assured that including bylines is company policy, that policy appears to be flexible depending on who is on the desk. The original is here, and here is the link to the Japan Times material:

Tokyo Yakult Swallows closer Tony Barnette was one of three first-time winners on Friday, when Nippon Professional Baseball announced its players and pitchers of the month for July.

Barnette, who saved all eight games he appeared in, was named to the Central League honor roll along with Swallows second baseman Tetsuto Yamada, who won his second player of the month award. The Pacific League honors went to a pair of first-timers, five-time home run king Takeya Nakamura of the Seibu Lions, and Fukuoka Softbank Hawks right-hander Rick van den Hurk.

Barnette allowed one run in 7-1/3 innings without issuing a walk to earn the nod over Yomiuri Giants starter Miles Mikolas. The June pitcher of the month went 3-0 with a 1.71 ERA in four games and struck out 15, but was overlooked this time.

Although Barnette gets the saves, it has hardly been a one-man show in the Swallows bullpen, with Orlando Roman and first-year setup man Logan Ondrusek in to keep games tight before the ninth.

“Those two guys have been just as good or better than anyone in the league,” Barnette told Kyodo News by email on Friday. “Roman is a guy that you can put into any situation and he’s going to dig deep and fight his way through it.”

“Logan has made the adjustment to Japan as well as anyone could ask for. There are growing pains that come with the move to Japan but he has excelled on and off the field. That being said, when I have guys like them protecting leads in front of me, it takes a bit of weight off my shoulders and gives me a freedom to just be myself and do the job I’ve been asked to do.”

“You add (Ryo) Akiyoshi into that mix and a revived (Kenichi) Matsuoka, we are in a good place as far as bullpen health and stability is concerned.”

The biggest surprise of the day was not that Nakamura deserved to win the award, but that he had never won it before. The monthly honors are typically handed out to players with stratospheric batting averages — something a career .257 hitter such as Nakamura rarely qualifies for. Nakamura, who has also won five PL Best IX awards, hit just .289, but reached base at a .400 clip, and led the league in home runs (eight) and slugging average (.711), while leading the nation with 26 RBIs.

Last month, Nakamura hit his 300th career home run and his 15th grand slam, the last figure tying him for the most in NPB history.

“It was an OK month,” he said. “I’m glad to win.”

Van den Hurk, who spent much of the first half on the Hawks farm team after suffering an injury in the spring, has finally landed a regular spot in the club’s starting rotation. The Dutch international went 3-0 in July with a 2.53 ERA and 41 strikeouts in a PL-high 32 innings.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2015/08/07/baseball/japanese-baseball/swallows-closer-barnette-among-three-first-time-monthly-mvp-award-winners/#.VcU9GEKUnto

Baseball, Paid Content, Research

The paradox of 1st inning bunts

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Hichori Morimoto getting his “wa” on with the obligatory sacrifice bunt.

There may be nothing duller in sports than teams employing tactics routinely in a predictable fashion. In Nippon Professional Baseball, the biggest offender is the nearly automatic sacrifice bunt after the leadoff man reaches first in a tie game. This begins in the first inning and never stops.

Yet, as much as we despair of watching Japan’s bunt pageant, something very strange is going on.

As expected, bunting with a runner on first base increases the expectation of scoring at least one run, but decreases overall scoring. In 2,592 NPB games from 2012 to 2014, the visiting team’s leadoff man were on first base 731 times. The next batter bunted 385 times — 344 of which were credited as sacrifices).

The visitors scored in 168 of those innings for a total of 266 runs. That’s at least a run 43.6 percent of the time and an average of .743 runs per inning. In the 346 times when the next visiting bunter — I mean batter — does not strike out trying to bunt or put a bunt in play, teams scored 299 runs and scored at least one 148 times. Sounds like a good deal doesn’t it. Teams that “fail” to bunt score nearly as often — 42.8 percent to 43.6 percent — while scoring 16 percent more total runs.

Yes, it looks like the visiting teams should retire the bunt if they’re giving away so many runs for so little gain. But that’s not the whole story. The teams that benefited by failing to bunt, also failed to win as often. It doesn’t make sense, but visiting teams scoring fewer than three runs after a bunt, won more often than teams scoring the same number of runs in an inning without a bunt.

winning percentages with: 0 runs: bunt .455; no bunt .378 — 1 run: bunt .538; no bunt .485 — 2 runs: .700; no bunt .526.

To say that Japan adores the sacrifice bunt is no exaggeration, and despite doing much better on the scoreboard without first-inning bunts, visiting teams from 2012 to 2014 did worse in win the win column when not executing the nation’s favorite tactic.