For the next four weeks there will be lots of this on cable TV…
Day 1 of Japanese spring training. It is the best of times. It is the worst of times.
It’s the best because teams are in camp preparing to play baseball. It’s the worst because it is easily the day for the most tedious baseball story lines of the year.
Today we were treated to the following headlines:
Manager Yoda says we’re striving to win the championship
Matsuzaka returns and greets fans — hopefully that went better than last year when an overenthusiastic high five from a fan injured the pitcher’s right shoulder and caused him to miss most of the season
Kenichi Tanaka throws 58 pitches in his 1st Hanshin bullpen, manager says he was flying
Fighters top draft pick Kawano says being in camp near the ocean in Okinawa is like a dream come true
Takano tries to impress with 128-pitch bullpen
New team adviser Jojima angers chairman Oh on 1st day
Jones impresses at Orix camp as a nice guy, not like a major leaguer at all
and …. major league power hitter Jones shows off his bunting skill
Giants Parra thrilled fans do “Baby Shark”
SoftBank’s Ka reports no discomfort wearing new uniform No.
PL MVP Mori: “I’m aiming for 3rd straight championship”
Carp manager Sasaoka on top draft pick Mori’s bullpen: “I felt he was a little nervous”
But its not all just bullpens and moronic observations about aiming for championships, although there is a lot of that, as well as players saying they want to make the Olympic team. There’s also batting practice reports.
Don’t forget the “home runs”
A big part of camp reporting is how many batting practice home runs are hit. So the first day saw the following.
Chunichi’s top draft pick Ishikawa hits 15 batting practice home runs
Nippon Ham’s Kiyomiya hit 17 homers, eight out of the park
Balentien hits 2 out in front of his role model, chairman Oh
Today’s topic is right-handed pitcher Junya Nishi, the Hanshin Tigers’ top draft pick last autumn. Nishi, a Hiroshima native, played for Soshigakuen HS in Okayama and is a distant relative of Tigers pitcher Yuki Nishi.
Haven’t heard anyone talk about Nishi’s hitting, but he’s got real power. I asked longtime former Dodgers scout Hank Jones, one of the instructors in the Scouting and General Manager course at Sports Management World Wide, what teams did back in the day when guys had hitting AND pitching tools back in the day before Shohei Ohtani.
Essentially, Jones said, “Let him prove he can’t hit. If he can’t then he’s a pitcher.”
But now that we’re living in the post-Ohtani world, one would think any team would at least consider a novel approach to a player with such obvious talent.
Physically, Nishi resembles Ron Cey, although he is a little taller than Cey. His pitching motion makes it look like he’s constantly overexerting himself, and his follow through is violent rather than smooth.
The pitcher
In the pitching video below, the announcer reports Nishi as saying his balance is off when his cap comes off his head — which it does frequently. When he bats, it looks like his lower body imparts very little of the impressive power he generates.
Here’s a first-round national championship game in 2018, when Nishi was a month shy of his 17th birthday. He touched 91.3 mph in this game with 40 command. He has since been recorded at 93.2, which would make his velocity a 60. He has a slider with depth and 50 command, a curve that he doesn’t command well what appeared to be a splitter with arm-side run and good depth.
Junya Nishi’s 16 strikeouts in the national championships as a 16-year-old.
The video below is an analysis of his motion and deliveries against the national collegiate team prior to last year’s Under-18 World Cup. I can’t vouch for the RPMs given on the video. The curve with poor command appears little different than the ones he threw at Koshien Stadium a year earlier, but it looks like the slider and fastball are even better and he’s added a changeup and improved the splitter.
Some slow motion of him pitching against Japan’s national collegiate hitters.
The hitter
I first noticed Nishi when he drove in eight runs against South Africa as Japan’s DH in their Under-18 World Cup game last autumn in South Korea.
The other instructor in our scouting course, former Dodgers GM and Blue Jays scout Dan Evans, provided us with a hack for recognizing above-average major league power, which I won’t spill hear, but suffice it to say hearing that he led the World Cup in home runs and hit 25 in his high school career as a pitcher.
He’s a right-handed hitter, with 60 power that I’ll project to 65 with work on his lower body mechanics with a 50 hit tool. Like most Japanese hitters he sprays the ball to all fields, although his power seems to be mostly to left.
Here’s some video of Nishi hitting in high school.
Pitcher Junya Nishi raked and mashed in high school.
Conclusion
Japan is obsessed with pitchers, and Nishi has a lot to offer on the mound, but his delivery bothers me a little. I’m inclined to think his power is the real deal and that he may have more future value as a hitter with fewer adjustments needed.
Whether he can be a two-way player or not is a good question. But if I’m the Hanshin Tigers, I’d at least ask him if he’s interested instead of just assuming that the team knows more than the player. The Tigers are kind of a mystery to me. I don’t understand their inability to commit to young players or their past failures to modernize the club’s strength-training program.
Maybe they see the possibility Nishi presents, but if I were to bet, my money would be on the “We’ve already made up our minds about his future as a pitcher.”
