The first travel off-day of the Japan Series is Sawamura Award day, when five former ace pitchers meet to name the most impressive starting pitcher of the season. The committee not only names a winner, but typically explains how today’s pitchers are not as good as pitchers were in their day.
The Japan Series heads to Osaka for Game 3 on Tuesday with Yakult leading Orix 1-0 after Game 2’s tie. The series will see its first lefty starters, Yakult’s Keiji Takahashi, and Orix’s Hiroya Miyagi.
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Yamamoto makes it 2 straight
Yoshinobu Yamamoto was named the winner of the Eiji Sawamura Award after leading the Pacific League with four complete games, two shutouts, 15 wins, a .750 winning percentage, 193 innings, 205 strikeouts and a 1.68 ERA. It was the second straight season he led in those six categories.
“There really was no one comparable,” the selection committee chairman, former Yomiuri Giants ace Tsuneo Horiuchi said.
The panel is made up of five former aces, who make a unanimous decision to hand out the award to a starting pitcher that best represents the spirit of the Giants’ first ace, Eiji Sawamura. Yamamoto was the first PL pitcher to win the award, handed out by the Yomiuri Shimbun, in consecutive years. Two CL pitchers have done so since it was thrown open to PL pitchers in 1989.
This year, there were only four panelists, following the withdrawal of longtime committee member Choji Murata, who was arrested on suspicion of assault in September.
The series so far
Sunday’s tie guaranteed the series will go at least five games, and probably more. So far it’s played out according to form.
The Swallows hitters have hit a bunch of home runs and struck out a lot, while the Buffaloes have been able to reach base at a .366 clip, but have stranded 26 runners in two games to Yakult’s 20.
The teams split last year’s two games at Osaka Dome, Games 1 and 2, with Takahashi throwing his first career shutout to beat Miyagi 2-0 in Game 2, after the Buffaloes walked off against Scott McGough in the 10th in Game 1.
Center fielder Yasutaka Shiomi (1.825 OPS), first baseman Jose Osuna (1.811) and third baseman Munetaka Murakami (.856) have been the big chance-producers for Yakult, while the Buffaloes offense has been much more broad based.
Shortstop Kotaro Kurebayashi, with a walk, two singles, and two doubles, has been the top regular in both games. The Swallows pitchers have issued 10 walks, five to Masataka Yoshida, including two intentional free passes.
I’m guessing Swallows lefty Masanori Ishikawa and right-hander Juri Hara will make appearances in Osaka after winning their interleague games there in June.
Not only are the Swallows trying to win back-to-back Japan championships for the first time in franchise history, the CL is trying to win consecutive Japan Series for the first time in 20 years, when the Yomiuri Giants beat the Seibu Lions in 2002, a year after the Swallows beat the Kintetsu Buffaloes, and two years after the Giants beat the Daiei Hawks.
That last one was the “neural surgeon convention series” — the schedule had to be rearranged because Daiei, never expecting to playing a Japan Series, had leased Fukuoka Dome out on the day Game 3 was supposed to be played there to a neural surgeon convention. That year, Game 3 was played on Monday, and the “travel day” and the Sawamura Award were set for the day after the first game in Fukuoka.
