There was more free agent news on Monday, when we also learned that the park that wasn’t built exactly right according to Nippon Professional Baseball may not need to be remodeled after the 2023 season after all because Japan’s application of rules resembles nothing so much as it does a game of telephone.
One comes and one goes
On Friday, SoftBank Hawks ace Kodai Senga reached an agreement on a five-year $75 million deal with the New York Mets, according to MLB.com. The Hawks don’t get a penny because posting is not in their business plan, but like the Mets, a few million dollars here and there isn’t going to cause the too much grief.
That news was followed by Monday’s announcement that free agent Fighters outfielder Kensuke Kondo signed with the Hawks, who beat out Nippon Ham, Seibu, Orix and Lotte with a six-year deal worth an “officially leaked” figure of 3.5 billion yen with additional incentives.
Kondo, who will be 30 in August, was credited with Delta Graphs with 4.0 WAR in 2022, on the low end of his norm but eighth best in the Pacific League despite playing just 99 games. Kondo swings at fewer pitches outside the zone than anyone in the PL other than his former Fighters teammate, Eagles outfielder Haruki Nishikawa, one reason he swings and misses less often than almost any other hitter in the league.
The Hawks are not a team to worry too much about money or good taste, having signed unrepentant domestic abuser Roberto Osuna, who pitched half a season for Lotte last for more than 600 million yen for the 2023 season.
I updated my Senga profile last month, and since then I talked to a number of MLB scouts. Everybody likes him, but there are concerns about the health of his arm. His deal is contingent on his passing a physical, so we’ll see if there’s any retracement there when the final deal gets done as there was with Kenta Maeda with the Dodgers.
The Fighters ballpark dimensions might be safe after all
There was a nifty Nikkan Sports story today about how Japanese amateur baseball may come to the rescue of the Nippon Ham Fighters new ballpark, Escargot Field Hokkaido, where the first row of seats behind home plate are closer to the action than allowed by Japan’s baseball rules.
Although NPB’s other 11 teams ordered the Fighters to reconfigure their park to suit the numbers in the rule book, Nikkan Sports reported that the issue could be resolved in a matter of days without sending the stadium architects back to the drawing board.
According to the story, a member of Japanese baseball’s rules committee from one of the amateur federations said Japan’s existing rule prohibiting the backstop from being less than 60 feet from home plate is wrong. How, one might ask, can a rule be wrong?
The source said that Japan’s rules, which began as essentially translations of MLB’s rules, have contained numerous mistranslations. What this means for the Fighters and their ballpark is that the MLB’s rule that “recommends” home plate be no closer to the backstop than 60 feet was translated into Japanese as the base “must be” no closer than 60 feet.
Unlike MLB, which only needs to consult with the players union before doing things like making runners magically appear at second base at the start of each extra inning, Japanese pro baseball cannot change its own rules without consent of the rules committee, which includes members from amateur federations.
The source said it is unknown how the mistranslations occurred because the person who was in charge of compiling these rules has since died, but that the principle adopted by NPB and the amateurs after they agreed to work together on the rules in the 1950s was to be faithful to the MLB originals. Sure Japan has its own rules, such as its bizarre interpretation of home base collisions which is more or less ignored.
Basically, NPB’s rules start as American rules which are then translated into Japanese and sorted out by committee and applied to pro baseball by amateurs. Got it?
In 2007, 20 different items were revised after members of the rules committee traveled to the States to seek clarifications. Ballpark dimensions were not among the issues covered. One of the rules that was changed was the qualifications for being credited with a save, which as some of you know, I was partly responsible for. But if you want to hear that story, you’ll have to subscribe to my weekly newsletter, although it is free.
