Four teams entered Thursday’s games either perfect or winless in Japan’s young season. We had one huge injury report and a couple of surprises, one of which was not a surprise, that Tsuyoshi Shinjo is a drama queen.
We had nine southpaw starting pitchers on Wednesday, which is pretty weird, and a 2 pm weekday start in Chiba, which is also unusual outside of Sendai. In Sapporo, manager Tsuyoshi Shinjo may have let on that he is a fan of the musical “Annie.”