If you pitched in an extreme home run park, and you had the ability to change your approach to go for fly-ball outs or ground-ball outs, most people would assume that the obvious choice would be to keep the ball on the ground in your home park.
I mention this because the Swallows’ pitchers are an extreme ground-ball staff when Yakult is the visiting team, and an extreme fly-ball staff when they are at home, where most of their games are played at home run-friendly Jingu Stadium.
I noticed this first in the 2022 data, but it’s been consistent, and points to an important thing about baseball that is frequently glossed over—that hitters have more influence in how plate appearances turn out than pitchers do.
When we have outstanding young talents such as 20-year-old Lotte Marines right-hander Roki Sasaki, the youngest pitcher to throw a perfect game, Orix Buffaloes ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, or Yakult Swallows third baseman Munetaka Murakami, who is shattering home run records at the age of 22, people in the States begin asking when they’re coming to MLB.
It’s not obvious in most cases.
Japanese players can’t just walk away until they have nine years of service time in Japan’s major leagues. Their Japanese teams can make them available through the posting system, but that is 100 percent up to the teams — unless the team has a contractual obligation to post the player.