Category Archives: Commentary

Ichiro Suzuki, Akinori Iwamura & other NPB minor league stars

Ichiro Suzuki is some day going to be the first player to begin his career in NPB and end up in MLB’s Hall of Fame. Akinori Iwamura won’t make it, but people familiar with his career in Japan know what a good ballplayer he was.

I recently re-added the minor league batting and pitching data from 1991 to 2001 to my data base — I lost my originals about 20 years ago in a hard disk crash — and asked which under-20 minor league hitter (minimum 200 PA) had the best seasons with offensive winning percentages over .700.

  1. Ichiro Suzuki (19.2 years old), Orix 1993, 214 PA, .883
  2. Akinori Iwamura (18.9), Yakult 1998, 430, .810
  3. Seiji Uebayashi (19.4), SoftBank 2015, 332, .799
  4. Akinori Iwamura (17.9), Yakult 1997, 297, .785
  5. Ichiro Suzuki (18.2 years old), Orix 1992, 270, .784
  6. Kensuke Kondo (19.4), Nippon Ham 2013, 227, .781
  7. Tomoya Mori (18.4), Seibu 2014, 257, .755
  8. Hisashi Takayama (19.1) Seibu 2001, 343, .708





Suzuki took a nice jump forward in 1993 and the next year took another when he won the first of his three straight PL MVP Awards. Most of the rest of the guys you know, although some of you may have forgotten Hisashi Takayama. He was an outfielder without outstanding speed or power and had one chance to play regularly at the age of 28 in 2010, when he played quite well, but was otherwise a guy on the fringe. Takayama’s minor league season at the age of 20 was the 10th best by a player aged 20-21 since 1991, so it’s fair to say Seibu REALLY missed the boat on him.

When Hisanobu Watanabe was promoted from farm manager in 2008, Takayama was one of the guys he gave a shot to in the spring, but at the age of 26 he needed an ally and didn’t have one. Then batting coach Hiromoto “Dave” Okubo, wasn’t a fan of Takayama’s and insisted on keeping hustling and likeable-but-underqualified Kenta Matsusaka as his right-handed-hitting platoon outfielder.

Uebayashi, who is mentioned here, is someone who lacks some plate discipline but who does everything else fairly well but has yet to break into SoftBank’s regular lineup. Had he played for Nippon Ham, however, like Kensuke Kondo, he’d no doubt have a job by now. Mori, it seems is caught in a crunch as well, he’s probably a better hitter than the other guys who are taking his playing time, but he needs to go out and prove.

The best minor league season for a player aged 20 was by Lotte’s Toshiaki Imae in 2004, a year before he became the Marines’ regular third baseman for a decade. At age 21, the best was by Ken Suzuki of the Seibu Lions in 1991. Suzuki went on to be a DH-third baseman for the Lions pennant-winning teams in ’97 and ’98 and a corner infielder with Yakult in 2001.







Japan trying to do right thing at home

 

Tigers catcher Haraguchi was ruled to have been blocking the base line here. The only thing that was in runner Seiji Kobayashi's path was a glove with the ball in it.
Tigers catcher Fumihito Haraguchi was ruled to have been blocking the base line here. Of course, the only thing that was in runner Seiji Kobayashi’s path was a glove with the ball in it but rules are rules

Watching the implementation of NPB’s new collision rule for a couple of months has been pretty painful. We’ve seen gun-shy catchers setting up for throws 10 feet from home plate to protect themselves from trigger-happy umpires and then be unable to reach the runner and make a tag.

Another scene that has played out twice in the past week was when a player not obstructing the baseline in any sense of the word was found to have violated the rule about fielders being in the baseline unless a throw takes them there. It looks stupid as all get out in both cases, since the runner had clear access to home base in each case, was tagged easily, and called out by the home plate ump — only to have crew chief Masanobu Sugiyama overturn the calls on video review.

The majors, which would like to get rid of all collisions but can’t seem to say so, have resorted to trying to define the scope under which “hard-nosed, old-time baseball crashes” can still occur and is struggling. In Japan, however, the mandate was to eliminate collisions at home plate, so the rules went beyond MLB’s. Unlike MLB, a fielder has no right to stand between a runner and home plate — even when he has the ball in his possession. The catcher can NEVER block home plate and the runner cannot initiate contact with a player covering home.

The only exception is when the umpire rules that the act of catching a ball puts the fielder in the baseline.

Osamu Ino, the gentleman who chairs NPB’s umpiring technical committee, and by the way also sits on Japan’s Rules Committee — NPB’s rules can’t be changed unless the amateurs sign off on it — tried to explain the process to me two days after the first out at home was overturned on video review by Suginaga.

“We wanted to get rid of collisions, the players union wanted that, too,” Ino said. “We thought about just adopting MLB’s rules, but we were concerned that if there was a way to block the plate or obstruct the base path with the ball, Japanese players would do it and collisions would still occur. I think it is something to do with our national character.”

What he was saying was not that Japanese players would cheat, but that a crystal clear definition of what was legal and what wasn’t was needed.

Then a wonderful quote came today from Japan rugby international Kensuke Hatakeyama and I suddenly understood Ino’s dilemma. After playing overseas the past few months, Hatakeyama made a number of observations, including this priceless one to my colleagues from Kyodo News in England a few days ago. He’s talking about the importance of teaching Japanese the right way to do something. (I’ll post the original Japanese at the end so anyone who has a better take on the quote can chip in.)

“If you go in the wrong direction, the Japanese will collectively go that way and that’s that. If a coach says (to Japanese) to cross on a red light, Japanese will mistakenly walk into the street and ‘Wham’ get run over.”

The plays at Seibu Prince Dome a week ago Friday and at Koshien Stadium on Wednesday, caused numerous heads to turn. But it seems that after decades of being instructed to ignore the obstruction rule at home plate, the umpires have been instructed clearly to interpret the rule as follows:

Neither the third base line including home plate can be occupied by a fielder. Because of this, fielders cannot prepare to make tags as they would at any other base. They not only have to give the runner a clear path to the base, but it has to be the prescribed path.

In the case of Wednesday’s game. Hanshin Tigers catcher Fumihito Haraguchi was straddling the plate. The base line was open, home plate was open. He gave the runner a lane to the plate, unfortunately the lane he provided was between his legs — and thus according to NPB’s narrow interpretation, he was risking a collision — which is of course nonsense. But Hatakeyama’s thoughts helped me understand how Japanese umpires could pretend obstruction wasn’t in the rule book last year, while now pointing to the rule book and enforcing the new rule to the 10th decimal place.

On Thursday, Yakult Swallows manager Mitsuru Manaka engaged the media with a 20-minute discussion about the rule and its interpretation.

“It’s very ambiguous,” he said — meaning there is a gap between the wording 0f giving the runner a clear lane — and the unwritten prescription that the lane is the third base line and all the air space above it.

“This implementation is Japanese. We tend to be anal retentive in these things.”

Next year, NPB will outlaw interference by runners on fielders attempting to make throws, which is the way the game is going, more toward speed and athleticism and less toward collisions in the name of “playing the game the right way.”

In MLB, ostensibly a runner has free reign to wreck havoc on middle infielders’ bodies PROVIDED he makes a bona fide slide into second base and never gives up the bag. Eventually, that sort of language will be replaced by what they’re trying to do in Japan, which is make a rule that states clearly that the purpose is to avoid injury and interference at the bag.

Ino said it will take a few iterations to get the home plate collision rule right, but at least the goal of Japan’s rule is clearly stated.

 

–Hatakeyama: “間違った方向に進めてしまうと、日本人はみんなまとまってそっちに行ってしまうので。赤信号を『これは進め』って教えたら、日本人は間違って行って『ボーン』とはねられると思う。”