Category Archives: Commentary

Opposing starting pitcher difficulty

All opponents are not created equal. The Giants’ Aaron Poreda is 5-1 in nine starts, three against Yakult and Hanshin, two against DeNA and 1 against Chunichi.  In calculating how tough a pitcher is against a given team, one should only count his record against OTHER teams. Thus while Poreda is 5-1,  he is 1-0 against Yakult and thus  his quality as concerns Yakult is 4-1.  Poreda is 3-0 against Hanshin, thus his record for calculating his difficulty against the Tigers is 2-1.

In the Yakult Swallows’ first 48 games, the opposing starting pitchers they have faced have a cumulative record against other teams of 102 wins and 69 losses or a .596 winning percentage. Of course, that is not entirely an accurate picture because the Swallows are below .500 in the Central League and haven’t had to face their own starting pitching, which combined for 93-153 record’s worth of difficulty on opponents. If we factor in 1/5 of the Swallows starters cumulative .378 win pct to adjust for the fact that the Swallows don’t play against themselves. That still leaves the difficulty of opposing pitchers vs Yakult at .561, the highest in Japan.

Yakult .561, Yomiuri Giants .558, Seibu Lions .553, DeNA BayStars .535,

Nippon Ham Fighters .523, Rakuten Eagles .510, Lotte Marines .509, Hiroshima Carp .507,

Orix Buffaloes .505, Chunichi Dragons .501, Softbank Hawks .498, Hanshin Tigers .493.

Broken-bat home run sighting and today’s events in NPB

Francisco Caraballo, who won the triple crown last season in Japan’s independent Baseball Challenge League, showed off some awesome power on Friday night, when he broke his bat on a 1-2 pitch from former Pacific League MVP Mitsuo Yoshikawa — and knocked it over the fence at Osaka’s Kyocera Dome. If you can see the video above, take note of Yoshikawa’s priceless reaction. This stuff is not supposed to happen. The two-run shot didn’t change the outcome of the game, however, as the last-place Orix Buffaloes fell 8-3 at home to the Nippon Ham Fighters. Brandon Laird, who joined Nippon Ham this season, hit a two-run shot of his own, his fifth homer of the year.

Elsewhere in the PL, the league-leading Seibu Lions wiped out the Lotte Marines, winning on the road at QVC Marine Field in a game that saw former Atlanta Braves farmhand and 2014 PL home run leader Ernesto Mejia double in a run in a three-run first. The Lions’ DH, 19-year-old catching wannabe Tomoya Mori went 3-for-5 with his seventh home run and a pair of doubles.

In Fukuoka, former New York Mets reliever Ryota “formerly the pitcher known as ‘Rocket Boy” Igarashi did a little war dance when he escaped a two-on jam in the seventh for the Softbank Hawks in a 5-3 win over the Rakuten Eagles. Kazuo Matsui homered twice at Yafuoku Dome, which was made more home run friendly this season because Hawks ownership wanted the team to hit home runs the way they did when the balls were juiced. His second came off Hawks closer Dennis Sarfate, who hadn’t allowed a run until “Little” took him deep in the ninth.

In the Central League, the three-time champion Yomiuri Giants blew a four-run lead in a 6-5 loss in Yokohama to the surprising CL-leading DeNA BayStars in which rookie closer Yasuaki Yamasaki struck out the Giants in order in the ninth with his 146-kph fastball and a pitch he calls a two-seamer that looks for all intent and purposes like the nastiest splitter you’ve seen. It was his 13th save of the season.

阪神vs広島 2015/05/08 ダイジェスト

In Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, freshly called-up lefty Takaya Toda continued his impressive spring by allowing two runs in six innings after winning six of his first seven games for the Hiroshima Carp’s Western League farm club. Toda (1-0) got the win in the Carp’s 8-3 victory over the Hanshin Tigers at Koshien Stadium. Tigers starter Shintaro Fujinami (1-4) bore the brunt of his club’s awful defense. The Tigers went into the game allowing opponents who put the ball in play to reach safely at an NPB-worst .365 clip. In his five innings on the mound, there were 18 balls in play and Carp batters reached safely eight times. It didn’t help that