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NPB 2020 Sept. 19

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NPB expands crowds

In a season that started behind closed doors on June 19, and welcomed in up to 5,000 per game starting from July 10, Saturday saw teams bring in somewhat larger crowds after a month and a half with no reported infections among spectators.

In the four day games played, only one was held out doors, where Yokohama Stadium welcomed 13,106 allowing fans to sit in the new left-field wing seats for the first time.

The other day games all saw smaller crowds: Fukuoka’s PayPay Dome had 11,937, Nagoya Dome 9,732 and Sapporo Dome 8,740.

“We were told it was only 13,000 people but it felt like 40,000 the way you guys cheered for the teams. Thank you so much,” BayStars manager Alex Ramirez said in his customary on-field interview after home games.

Hawks look to expand fans overseas

Starting Saturday, the SoftBank Hawks’ YouTube channel will be posting videos accessible in multiple languages in order to build their overseas fan base. Whether or not one is a fan of the Hawks, it’s kind of fun.

BayStars hand Giants 3rd straight loss

Neftali Soto hit his 100th home run in Japan, one of four hit by the DeNA BayStars in their 7-1 win over the Yomiuri Giants at Yokohama Stadium.

Lefty Haruhiro Hamaguchi (5-4) brought an unusually crisp fastball and abstained from his bread-and-butter changeup for much of the game as he allowed a run on two walks and two hits over 5-2/3 innings.

A run in the sixth snapped a 2x-inning scoreless streak for the Giants, who avoided a shutout but not a third straight loss.

Takayuki Kajitani reached on a first-inning error and scored on a Keita Sano single and then drove in three runs with his 13th and 14th home run. Soto, who is trailing in the race to win a third-straight home run title, hit his 16th.

Giants starter Nobutaka Imamura (3-1) lost the southpaw struggle, allowing three runs, two earned, over five innings.

In the end decided on two pitches in the sixth and six in the seventh. With DeNA leading 3-1 in the sixth, Giants right-hander Yohei Kagiya loaded the bases with one out. Tatsuhiro fouled out on one pitch, and Yasutaka Tobashira popped up lefty Ryusei Oe’s first pitch.

In the top of the seventh, the Giants loaded the bases on one out against Yuki Kuniyoshi. Lefty Edwin Escobar entered to face Gerardo Parra, who rolled the sixth pitch back to the pitcher and a 1-2-3 double play.

Carp squeak past Swallows

Shota Dobayashi hit an eighth-inning game-tying home run and scored the go-ahead run in the 10th-inning when rookie Minoru Omori bounced a two-out two-strike pitch past the reach of second baseman Tetsuto Yamada that lifted the Hiroshima Carp to a 3-2 win over the Yakult Swallows at Tokyo’s Jingu Stadium.

The game was a duel between rookies, Carp right-hander Masato Morishita, a highly-sought after amateur who has been extremely solid, and Yakult’s second-pick last autumn, right-hander Daiki Yoshida, whose stuff and command has been a little less dominant.

Tomotaka Sakaguchi brought the Yakult Swallows from a run down with a second-inning home run.

With one out and a runner on first, Sakaguchi went after a low first-pitch fastball like he knew it was coming and pulled it into the right-field stands for his ninth home run. Prior to this season, Sakaguchi’s high was five home runs, in 2009 and 2010 with the Orix Buffaloes.

He then did what low-power hitters are supposed to say after they hit a home run, that they were trying to play small ball and trying hard not to be Mr. Big Shot home run hitter by using the word “tsunagu” – つなぐ.

“My focus was on batting aggressively from the first pitch so I could set the table for the batters behind me,” said Sakaguchi, who was followed by the seventh, eighth and ninth spots in a lineup that is fifth in a six-team league in runs scored and 10th worst in Japan.

Abe homer beats Tigers

Toshiki Abe hit a three-run home run and Koji Fukutani (4-2) worked 6-2/3 scoreless innings in a 4-1 win over the Hanshin Tigers at Nagoya Dome.

Tigers right-hander Takumi Akiyama (5-2) allowed five hits and committed two errors that made all four Dragons runs unearned.

Fledgling Eagle holds off Hawks

Ryota Takinaka, the Rakuten Eagles’ sixth pick in last year’s draft, held the SoftBank Hawks to a run over 5-1/3 innings in his pro debut and Hideto Asamura singled in the tie-breaking run in the seventh in a 3-1 win over the three-time defending Japan Series champs at Fukuoka’s PayPay Dome.

Takinaka a 25-year-old right-hander, scattered five hits and one walk while striking out one.

Former Padre Kazuhisa Makita worked 1-1/3 scoreless innings to protect a one-run lead, and Alan Busenitz worked a 1-2-3 ninth to earn his 12th save for the Eagles.

Buffaloes beat misbehaving Lions

Sachiya Yamasaki (3-4) allowed a run over seven innings and Aderlin Rodriguez doubled in two runs to break a 1-1 sixth-inning tie in the Orix Buffaloes’ 6-3 win over the Seibu Lions.

The Daily Sports blamed the Lions loss on their mistakes, and they certainly didn’t help, but five walks by lefty Sean Nolin (1-2) didn’t help either.

Nolin left in the sixth with one out and the bags juiced. Rookie Tetsu Miyagawa hung a 1-2 slider that Rodriguez lined into the left-field corner. A wild pitch made it 4-1.

The Lions had two on with no outs in the seventh but shat themselves. Rookie catcher Sena Tsuge pulled back a first-pitch bunt attempt and the lead runner failed to make it back for the first out. A sharp grounder to third, which was not a mistake — except in the sense that people who write those dumb articles have to include them — was turned for a double play.

Roller coaster Arihara spills Marines

The roller coaster season of Nippon Ham Fighters ace Kohei Arihara (5-7) continued with eight scoreless innings in a 3-1 win over the Lotte Marines at Sapporo Dome.

Marines starter Tsuyoshi Ishizaki (0-1) allowed a run over three innings to take the loss without allowing a hit. He did, however, walk five and strike out five.

Arihara started the season 0-3, allowing 12 runs over 22 innings. He had another three-game stretch where he went 0-2 and allowed 16 runs 19-1/3 innings, and was coming off a start against the Rakuten Eagles on Sept. 13 when he gave up nine runs in 2-1/3. He improved to 3-0 against Lotte, however.

Active roster moves 9/19/2020

Deactivated players can be re-activated from 9/29

Central League

Activated

TigersC39Kenya Nagasaka

Dectivated

TigersP77Onelki Garcia
TigersOF68Shunsuke Fujikawa

Pacific League

Activated

EaglesP57Ryota Takinaka
MarinesP30Tsuyoshi Ishizaki
BuffaloesP11Sachiya Yamasaki

Dectivated

EaglesP56Sora Suzuki
BuffaloesP49Keisuke Sawada

Starting pitchers for Sept. 20, 2020

Pacific League

Fighters vs Marines: Sapporo Dome 2 pm, 1 am EDT

Chihiro Kaneko (1-3, 6.82) vs Manabu Mima (7-2, 4.62)

Buffaloes vs Lions: Kyocera Dome 1 pm, 12 midnight EDT

Andrew Albers (3-6, 4.07) vs Wataru Matsumoto (3-3, 3.82)

Hawks vs Eagles: PayPay Dome 1 pm, 12 midnight EDT

Shuta Ishikawa (6-2, 2.47) vs Takayuki Kishi (1-0, 9.19)

Central League

Swallows vs Carp: Jingu Stadium 6:30 pm, 5:30 am EDT

Yasuhiro Ogawa (8-3, 3.15) vs Yuta Nakamura (-)

BayStars vs Giants: Yokohama Stadium 2 pm, 1 am EDT

Shinichi Onuki (6-3, 2.26) vs Seishu Hatake (0-3, 5.95)

Dragons vs Tigers: Nagoya Dome 2 pm, 1 am EDT

Takahiro Matsuba (2-4, 3.30) vs Kenichi Nakata (0-1, 6.23)

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NPB 2020 9-18 members notes

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Practice, practice, practice

With few exceptions there are no off days once the Japanese baseball season starts. There are travel days, but for the most part, those include optional practices which are optional in the same sense that “independent free training” takes place with teammates under supervision of coaches who watch from a distance and is neither independent or free.

There are, of course exceptions. Notably, the Nippon Ham Fighters don’t practice on travel days, but not taking BP before a game is pretty rare.

On Friday, Hawks manager Kimiyasu Kudo had his team skip pre-game practice after his team only arrived at Fukuoka Airport shortly before 2 pm after a flight from Sapporo.

“The players’ conditioning is crucial,” said Kudo, who limited the workout to a light warmup. “I also decided that on a day like this I wouldn’t use players nursing minor injuries.”

Teams will occasionally give veterans the option of skipping batting practice but like fight money, it’s not something they talk about freely, which brings us to Boomer.

Boomer bust

Greg “Boomer” Wells was a Triple Crown-winner for the Hankyu Braves, who played in 47 MLB games before he was sold by the Minnesota Twins to the Hankyu Braves.

In 10 Japanese seasons, Boomer, who was also taken in the 16th round of the 1975 NFL draft by the New York Jets, hit .317 with 277 home runs. He led the PL in home runs once, in RBIs four times, in hits four times and batting average twice.

At the 2015 winter meetings, he told me this story about the time he didn’t want to take batting practice because of fatigue.

  • Coach: “If you don’t hit, you don’t play.”
  • Boomer: “Ok. 5 swings.”
  • Coach: “20.”
  • Boomer: “10 OK?”

So Boomer took 10 swings, had a home run and three hits and the Braves won. The next day, he went to the coach and was approved for no BP, and he had another good game. After about a week, he said he wanted to work on something before the game, only to be told he didn’t need it.

  • Boomer: “I really need it. I’m getting rusty. I need 20 swings.”
  • Coach: “No. You’re fine. You’re swinging well.”
  • Boomer: “And I want to keep swinging well. 20 swings.”
  • Coach: “OK. Five. Five swings that’s it.”
  • Boomer “I need 20. But I’ll take 10.”
  • Coach: “You shouldn’t practice at all, but I’ll allow 10.”

Tomiji Iizuka

When I started writing my first analytic guide to Japanese baseball, I was surprised at the high quality of a lot of players in the minor leagues. Of course, that was 1993, and the idea that anything that minor league performance was unconnected to a player’s ability to play baseball was still strong.

The Orix BlueWave had a 19-year-old minor league outfielder who won the Western League batting title the year before, and an older reserve utility infielder who drew walks like Rembrandt. Neither were considered anything but minor leaguers.

The same thing went for the Chunichi Dragons. OK it still happens for the Chunichi Dragons, since ignoring minor league results of anyone but the most in-favor youngsters is still against the rules it seems. Anyway, the Dragons had a walk-drawing, home run-cranking former catcher who was considered a failure – until he finally got a chance at the age of 27 and led the CL in home runs in his first full season. Takeshi Yamasaki went on to hit 403 in his career.

The Yomiuri Giants had a guy like that, a former first-round draft pick named Takeshi Omori who’d had a few bad games on the first team under then manager Motoshi Fujita, who was then consigned to being the best hitter in the Eastern League by far for about six years.

Anyway, that’s what teams all did then, and it was so much fun finding these guys who sure as hell looked like they could play while hoping to hell they would get traded to a team that knew what they were getting. But that rarely happened. In the case of the Orix pair, the youngster’s career was rescued by a managing change, and with two players named Suzuki on the roster, the kid’s registered name was changed to Ichiro.

His teammate was not so lucky. The Western League was very, very tough on hitters, yet Ichiro’s older teammate, reserve infielder Tomiji Iizuka, was an on-base machine.

I only have minor league data back to 1991, but in Iizuka’s final five seasons, he had 983 minor league plate appearances hit .299 with a .416 on-base percentage and a .471 slugging average. He was a pretty good player on the first team as well, despite only getting 431 plate appearances over 13 seasons, only once getting more than 74 in a single season.

I knew that after his career, Iizuka became an umpire, but I didn’t recall seeing him call a game behind the plate until Friday. I only looked up to see who the home plate ump was after his zone was drawing some disbelieving looks from Hawks starter Matt Moore who could hit the glove but couldn’t buy a strike at the lower boundry.

I don’t know if Iizuka’s eye for the strike zone is as sharp as it was when he was a player, but strike zone judgement and plate discipline was his principle skill, and as much as it looked like he might have squeezed Moore a little, I’d like to think he was calling him as he saw them and that a guy who should have been a first-team regular can still see them better than most people.