Service time conundrum

The SoftBank Hawks apparently did not manipulate Yuki Yanagita’s service time in 2019 in order to discourage him from moving to the major leagues as a free agent, the players union said Thursday.

Satoru Kato, an official of the Japan Professional Baseball Players Association, said that while Yanagita’s case was cause for concern, it was not the only concern the union has about Japanese clubs manipulating service time.

Yanagita, easily the best player in Japan over the past seven years, suffered a leg injury in 2019, missed more than half of the season, and fell 10 days shy of the 145 needed to register his eighth year of first-team service time. That prevented him from qualifying to file for international free agency after the 2020 season, as he had planned.

Kato said Yanagita and his agent approached the union about the issue, so he spoke with the club and all sides were satisfied the Hawks did not prolong his rehab period for the purpose of denying him a year of service time — or perhaps it was just a case where there was not enough of a smoking gun to show the Hawks had acted improperly.

“They contacted us with their concerns and we talked to the team,” Kato said. “In this case it appears they did not keep him inactive for that purpose. But it isn’t like teams don’t push the limits, particularly with starting pitchers, calling them up to make one start every 10 days.”

“We’ve had to talk to teams about things like that a lot. But at the same time, we have to inform the players, because many of them don’t know what it means for them.”

Kato didn’t spell out which teams he might have spoken to about this but if one looked for a young pitcher who was starting every 10th or 11th day and being deactivated between starts, that would look suspicious.

Like this:

  • Aug. 20 Activated: 5 IP, 6 K, 1 ER, Aug. 21 deactivated
  • Aug. 31 Activated: 5 IP, 2 K, 2 ER, Sept. 1 deactivated
  • Sept. 12 Activated: 4-2/3 IP, 3 K, 4 ER, Sept. 13 deactivated
  • Sept. 26 Activated: 5 IP, 5 K, 2 ER, Sept. 27 deactivated
  • Oct. 9 Activated: 4 IP, 4 K, 5 ER, Season ends.

This is the 2017 activation history of one team’s 2016 fourth-round draft pick out of high school. The pitcher in question posted a 0.27 ERA in the 33-2/3 Western League innings that season and has since had three full years of service time

But despite making five starts for the Orix Buffaloes between Aug. 20 and Oct. 9, Yoshinobu Yamamoto amassed just five days of service time in his rookie season.

This isn’t an issue at the moment, but if one of Japan’s premier pitchers, should suffer an injury that causes him to miss half a season, those 45 days of service time could cost him a year before he files for free agency.

Doing the Dragon twist

The Chunichi Dragons became the latest Japanese team to edit their official cheer song to suit changing times. With their ballpark’s naming rights sold this year to “Vantelin Nagoya Dome”, the club consulted with the composer of “Let’s Burn it up Dragons” to edit out the line about a “jam-packed” Nagoya Dome to “Battle Chunichi with strong dreams.”

I don’t have the complete list of all the teams that have kept their official songs but only swapped out offended lyrics. I do know that the songs of the DeNA BayStars, SoftBank Hawks and Hanshin Tigers were all written for their clubs’ old names. In the Hawks’ case it was simply a matter of swapping the name of the club’s former owner, supermarket chain Daiei, for SoftBank.

The Tigers’ iconic “Rokko Oroshi” was written when the team was known as the Osaka Tigers. In 1961 the team ditched Osaka for the name of its then parent company, the Hanshin Railroad, the “Osaka” in “Oh, oh, oh, Osaka Tigers, hurray, hurray, hurray,” was switched out to “Hanshin.” This is not as awkward as it might sound, and a lot of really old fans really hate it I understand, but I’ve never known any different.

The same cannot be said of the new hiccup in the DeNA BayStars team song.

When internet game company DeNA bought the club in 2012, it replaced the catchy, “Yo, yo, yo, Yokohama BayStars” with the horrible “Yo, yo, yo, DeNA BayStars.”

Yo, yo, yo, DeNA, fix your damn song.

Just in case you’re unfamiliar with what people are saying when singing “Let’s burn it up Dragons!” I’ve kind of translated it one main version of it. The Dragons are famous for alternate versions and I don’t claim to know where this one fits in, although it is a recent version meant to include interleague opponents.

 Hear the dragon's roar echo far away in the night,
 At jam-packed Nagoya Dome*.
 We shiver together
 Way to go, do your best, let's burn it up Dragons!
 
 Defeat the tigers, catch the carp,
 Cloud over Hama's starry constellation.
 Drop the swallows and the big guys.
 Hold your breath, we'll win.
 Way to go, do your best, let's burn it up Dragons!
 
 Catch a lion, hunt a hawk,
 master a buffalo and span the sea.
 Both the northern fighter and golden eagle
 will prostrate before the Dragons as we win.
 Way to go, do your best, let's burn it up Dragons! 

Way to go, do your best, let’s burn it up Dragons! It’ s not quite the Four Tops, but it is the same old song.

Here’s a version celebrating the Dragons’ 1974 champions, giving a shout out to each of the players in the lineup and the pitching staff and the bench and coaching staff as well.

writing & research on Japanese baseball

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