It’s took two weeks, but the blowback over Yakult manager Takahiro Ikeyama’s heretical disregard of Japan’s sacrifice bunt dogma has begun. The Orix Buffaloes got some bad news, and there were games as well.
Bad break for Buffaloes
Orix ace Hiroya Miyagi was diagnosed with damage to his ulnar collateral ligament in his left elbow Friday, and the team said it will get a second opinion before proceeding with season-ending surgery. Miyagi threw some absolutely wicked sliders to get two strikeouts with two on and no outs but left after the second strikeout with elbow discomfort.
The diminutive 24-year-old southpaw has struck out 17 batters in 13-1/3 innings this season. He is 50-30 in his career with a 2.51 ERA, has pitched for Japan in each of the last two WBC’s, and was one of the players I was so looking forward to seeing regularly this season.
He’s a delightful guy, and in March at Tokyo Dome, he became the first Japanese player in my 30 years covering baseball here to ask me to give him a high five.
Bunt blowback
“If they (the Swallows) keep playing this way, they’ll finish last,” a “pennant-winning manager” said Thursday according to Ronspo.com.
On Wednesday, former Hanshin Tigers skipper Akinobu Okada questioned Ikeyama’s choices.
“Back when I was managing, the team with the most sacrifice bunts usually won the title. That was the case in 1985, too. It may look like Hanshin won by hitting a lot, but we actually had a high number of sacrifice bunts,” Okada said of the Tigers’ first Japan Series champs, one of two Tigers pennant-winning teams to lead the league in sacrifices. They were first again last year as well, but fourth in sacrifices in 2005, when Okada managed his first CL pennant.
Okada is almost right. Teams leading their league in sacrifice bunts since 1980 don’t usually win the pennant, but they have won 27 percent of the time. But in those 46 seasons, the bunt leaders have finished fifth 23 times as well. Teams that lead in sacrifices are often the teams with more base runners and are more often in situations where one run can make a positive impact.
Japanese teams trailing by five runs in the seventh don’t sacrifice–unless it’s a high school game where teams that do so are lauded for their fighting spirit.
Sacrifice bunts are nowhere near the panacea the “controlled-baseball” ideologs claimed in the 1980s and ’90s, when former Seibu Lions skipper Masaaki Mori asserted that that the “Pillars of every offense are reaching base and sacrificing.”
But, on the other hand, sacrifice bunts are nowhere near the instant death a lot of American critics claim. When Bobby Valentine took over the Lotte Marines in 1995, a lot of Japan-based American baseball fans and writers predicted Lotte would win the Pacific League pennant simply by virtue of bunting far less than their opponents.
The Marines finished second that year, while finishing second in sacrifices. They bunted smarter, but in Japan, the sacrifice is part of baseball’s fabric, and simply tearing it out can have unintended consequences.
After 2003, his first season in Japan as manager of the Nippon Ham Fighters, Trey Hillman expressed his frustration that the “I am helping” sacrifice dogma encouraged players to avoid the criticism of failing to produce a hit by literally giving them an easy out. The Fighters finished last in sacrifices in his first three years, and by 2006, the players had had enough.
There other factors involved such as the Fighters’ pitching and defense improving to the point where one-run tactics became extremely efficient, but according to Hillman, team captain Makoto Kaneko encouraged him to consider the value of a more culturally appropriate approach to Japan. Starting in 2006, the Fighters led the PL in sacrifices for five straight seasons, during which they won three pennants.
Ikeyama’s team hadn’t sacrificed all season until Wednesday–and then after opting not to have pitcher Kengo Matsumoto bunt in a classic runner-on-first-no-out situation two innings earlier. Ikeyama declared he WOULD sacrifice this season, but on Thursday, he again opted not to bunt with his pitcher with two on and one out in a 2-0 loss. The Ronspo.com article attributed the loss to that “failure.”
The Yakult skipper’s other heresy has been batting his pitchers eighth instead of ninth. Tom Tango’s research in “The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball,” demonstrated that it is better to have your worst hitter bat eighth, because diluting the heart of the offense at the top of the lineup is less costly than the damage caused by having your pitcher follow the Nos. 5, 6 and 7 spots.
That’s why it makes sense to bat the pitcher eighth. But Ikeyama doesn’t say that. Instead, he wants his pitchers batting eighth to contribute to the offense with “the mindset of position players.” Unfortunately, that’s dumber than batting them ninth. Because pitchers are the only players on the roster who contribute more to run scoring by sacrificing at every opportunity, taking the sacrifice away from them is counterproductive.
Having batted his pitchers eighth for seven straight games from the second game of the season, Ikeyama had his starter batting ninth again on Friday. This suggests that he is either bowing to meaningless dogma or he thinks Opening Day starter Kojiro Yoshimura, who went again Friday, is completely useless unable to bat “as if he were a position player.” Whatever the reason, he had Yoshimura up their swinging and not bunting with two outs and a runner on in the fifth when trailing by a run.
Bad news for Miyagi and Buffaloes
Friday’s games
Giants 3, Swallows 2: Yomiuri’s Opening Day starter, rookie lefty Kazuyuki Takemaru, surrendered eight hits and a walk but just one run over 5-1/3 thanks to Yakult making a couple of outs on the bases. Trey Cabbage singled and scored on a double by Riku Masuda, who tried to take advantage of left-fielder Domingo Santana‘s arm and was out at the plate on a high looping throw. An error and a Yuta Izuguchi double made it 2-0 off Kojiro Yoshimura in the third.
The Swallows got on the board by smashing straight fastballs from Takemura for three consecutive one-out singles. After surrendering a sacrifice fly , the lefty stumbled on the mound while delivering a pitch. The accidental ephus missed home plate by a good three meters, but catcher Yukinori Kishida was all over it and threw out Jose Osuna at third. Takemaru left in the sixth with two out and two on, for Hiromasa Funabasama, who did a fair Rembrandt impersonation, painting the edge of the zone for a strikeout.
Cabbage led off the “lucky seventh” with his third homer. Former closer Taisei Ota gave up a single and a double and a run-scoring groundout to start the Swallows’ eighth, but sawed off Jose Osuna‘s bat before retiring Yukihiro Iwata for the first time in the game.
Marines 6, Lions 3: Lotte’s Gregory Polanco singled in the second and scored on the first of two Ryusei Terachi RBI singles. Kyuto Ueda doubled in the fourth and scored on Terachi’s second. Alexander Canario‘s fifth-inning RBI double made it 2-1, and Junichiro Kishi‘s two-out eighth-inning double put Seibu up 3-2, before a Lions lapse let Lotte back into the game.
With the bases loaded in the ninth, seven-time Golden Glove-winning shortstop Sosuke Genda fumbled a two-out grounder. With everyone focused on his late throw to first, the runner from second, Akito Takabe, alertly scored the go-ahead run. Polanco plated two runs with a single to complete the counterattack.
Tigers 5, Dragons 3: Chunichi’s Seiya Hosokawa reached on an error in the second and scored before doubling in Hiroki Fukunaga in the third. Shota Morishita‘s league-leading fifth home run made it a one-run game in the sixth. Hosokawa drew a one-out walk that set up an eighth-inning insurance run and a 3-1 Dragons lead.
Trailing by two, Hanshin’s Teruaki Sato doubled to open the ninth and scored on Yusuke Oyama’s third hit. Ukyo Maegawa‘s two-out pinch-hit double tied it, and the go-ahead run scored when the ball was mishandled in the corner. Koji Chikamoto doubled in an insurance run, and closer Suguru Iwazaki stranded two runners for his fourth save.
The BayStars and Carp were rained out in Yokohama, while the Eagles and Buffaloes were rained out in Sendai.
Shota, not Masato Morishita!
Yes, of course. Pardon the senior moment.