There was no baseball in Japan Friday, but the night before the postseason begins with the Central and Pacific league’s Foreplay series’ first stage, we have our starting-pitching matchups for Saturday’s games in Hiroshima and Chiba, and ladies and gentlemen, that makes this Roki Eve.
In another connection with Chiba, longtime former Marines third baseman Toshiaki Imae has been tabbed to manage the Rakuten Eagles after the club opted to promote Kazuhisa Ishii to “Senior Director” rather than extending his contract after the Eagles finished fourth for the second straight year.
Calling Japan’s playoffs what they are
When the PL acted to make its late-season games meaningful by introducing a two-stage playoff format in 2004, the CL owners howled with laughter at their temerity, that having playoffs implied the old way, championed by the CL since its founding in 1950, could be anything less than ideal.
But for the next three years, PL teams in the playoff hunt drew big crowds in September and October, while CL teams played out the string. The CL pennant winners then sat on their hands waiting for a battle-hardened PL champion to emerge and vanquish them in the Japan Series.
So in 2007, the CL decided it would have a postseason tournament, too, and would put its stamp on it with new rules and a new name. And unlike pupils caught laughing amongst themselves in class and asked by the teacher if they would like to share the joke with the rest of the class, the CL owners, who thought the PL playoffs were hilarious, came up with something worth laughing at. Seeking something catchy the CL smart asses decided that the Japan Series’ qualifying tournament was a “Climax Series,” suggesting they might not know whether they are coming or going.
Saturday’s pitchers
On Saturday, Sasaki, who has had two three-inning stints since coming back from an oblique strain and has since been deactivated for COVID, will go against Carter Stewart Jr., who has mastered the splitter he learned in the minors and is now mixing with an excellent fastball and curve. If his command is consistent, which it has not been, he is absolutely filthy.
In Hiroshima, the Carp and Deniers will each send their top winner this season to the mound, with Hiroshima lefty Hiroki Tokoda (11-7, 2.19 ERA) against Katsuki Azuma (16-3, 1.98 ERA). If the Sawamura Award were actually Japan’s equivalent of MLB’s Cy Young Award, Azuma would win one, but unfortunately the award is for the most impressive starting pitcher in Japan, and he’ll have to take a back seat to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who led the PL in strikeouts, ERA and wins for the third straight season.
Imae asked to manage the Eagles
On May 26, after posting an NPB-worst .210 batting average through its first 42 games, the Eagles swapped batting coaches, sending Yuhei Takai to the farm and promoting Imae. From May 27 to the end of the season, the Eagles batted an NPB-best .258 as they surged into playoff contention only to fall short on the final pitch of the regular season.
I haven’t spoke much with Imae, but remember speaking to him in the closing days of the 2009 season. That year, Bobby Valentine endured the season-long machinations of front office cabal led by one of NPB’s most notorious grifters, Ryuzo Setoyama, who undermined him daily in a failed attempt to enforce a clause that would allow Lotte to fire Valentine without paying the remainder of his hefty salary.
Imae was quiet and as a youngster was often seen hanging out with shortstop Tsuyoshi Nishioka, who was part of a faction within the team that sucked up to Setoyama, and there were some who thought he might have been on the side of the grifters. But in Valentine’s final days, Imae told me he was extremely emotional about the skipper’s upcoming departure, because of how much he’d learned from him.
