It’s been a few days without any game recaps as I’ve been trying to update a database to analyze the trove of pitch data I’ve been compiling for NPB games since 2020. This got supercharged Friday when Roki Sasaki turned his slider loose, and got another boost after a conversation Tuesday with a data scientist who is studying called balls and strikes in NPB. Attacking the data I did from a different direction but reaching a similar conclusion.

Spoiler alert: If you’re a Hanshin Tigers fan in need of something to complain about, I’ll provide it.

More on those later, though, after some notes about Wednesday’s games, when Shumpeita Yamashita Franmil Reyes remained on a roll, and Andre Jackson posted his third straight quality start for DeNA.

In other news, Masahiro Tanaka pitched on the farm today and threw 102 pitches over 5-2/3 innings in a game against DeNA, and said he was progressing toward being ready to resume pitching in Japan’s majors for the first time since having shoulder surgery last year.

Wednesday’s games

Swallows 3, Giants 0: At Osaka UFO Dome, Kojiro Yoshimura (6-8) scattered nine hits over the distance for his first career complete game. He struck out five but did not issue a walk.

Yomiuri’s Foster Griffin (6-4) got into his second straight pitchers’ duel against Yakult, and surrendered the first runs via the imported heart of the Swallows’ order, when Domingo Santana singled in the fourth and Jose Osuna followed with his 16th home run. Griffin struck out seven over seven innings, and Santana set up Yakult’s third run with his third hit of the game, an eighth-inning leadoff single.

Yoshimura, who allowed 14 runs over 21 innings in his last three starts, won for the first time since he threw 7-1/3 shutout innings against the Giants on June 21.

Buffaloes 4, Lions 0: At Kobe Green Stadium, Shumpeita Yamashita (3-4) reeled off another impressive start, and Yutaro Sugimoto gave him a little breathing room with a second-inning solo homer, his ninth, off Chihiro Sumida (8-9). Sugimoto then capped a three-run fifth-inning rally with a two-out two-run bases-loaded single.

Yamashita struck out nine and walked two, while allowing four singles and a double. Kosei Yoshida bailed the Buffaloes out of a two-on, two-out jam in the eighth and Luis Perdomo worked a 1-2-3 ninth to wrap up the shutout .

BayStars 6, Carp 1: At Yokohama Stadium, Andre Jackson (6-7) got an early gift when Toshiro Miyazaki capped a five-run first inning off Makoto Aduwa (6-4) with a three-run home run. Jackson allowed five hits and walked three while striking out five. The win moved fourth-place DeNA to within five games of the first-place Carp, who remain a half-game ahead of the Giants.

Tigers 9, Dragons 4: At Koshien Stadium, Shoki Murakami gave up two first-inning runs to Chunichi, but Hanshin came back with a vengeance in the home half, scoring six runs on six straight hits off Shinnosuke Ogasawara. Shota Morishita doubled in two, Yusuke Oyama reset the table with a double for a Teruaki Sato two-run single, and rookie Kota Inoue belted his second career homer, to make it 6-2.

Seiya Hosokawa hit a solo homer for the Dragons.

Fighters 8, Hawks: At Fukuoka “Your company’s name can go here” Dome, Franmil Reyes set a franchise record with a two-run first-inning homer off Tomohisa Ozeki, giving him a hit in 25 straight games, but things went quickly south for the Fighters as, to quote my podcast partner John E. Gibson, “Sachiya Yamasaki was pitching like it was the All-Star Game.” Yamasaki surrendered back-to-back solo homers to Kenta Imamiya and Ryoya Kurihara, and let the Hawks load the bases on a single and two walks so Soichiro Ishizuka could single in the tie-breaking run. Hotaka Yamakawa led off SoftBank’s third with his 30th home run before Kensuke Kondo walked and scored to make it 5-2, where it stood until the ninth.

Yuki Matsumoto walked the leadoff batter, Daiki Asama doubled with one out off Ryo Oyama, who allowed back-to-back RBI singles to Yua Tamiya and Ryota Igarashi. Shun Mizutani singled in the fourth run of the inning before Kotaro Kiyomiya, who walked and scored in the first, blasted a two-run homer.

The Fighters’ second straight win over SoftBank left them eight games out of first place, which is fairly amazing but an awful lot of ground to make up with 22 games left on their schedule. Mind you, if they do overtake the Hawks it would be the new greatest pennant race comeback, surpassing their 2016 championship.

Fun with pitch counts

As I mentioned, a data scientist has been working with called balls and strikes in Japanese baseball, where some of you may remember I found some serious issues with how a team that has been only slightly better than average at getting called strikes in most counts, the Yomiuri Giants, have excelled at getting first pitches called strikes by Japan’s umpires.

There will be more details about this in the future, but after talking to the researcher on Tuesday, she mentioned something about a Giants’ edge on first-pitch called strikes with runners in scoring position, something I hadn’t looked into, and so I took a quick look today.

The table below shows how often the pitchers from each Central League team got favorable calls on first strikes with runners in scoring position from 2020 through Sept. 1, 2024. Because the teams are very, very close, the standard deviation is ultra small, making the Giants’ 37.6 percent of called strikes stand out like a sore thumb.

As mentioned in my previous research, there is a positive correlation between how often pitchers get called strikes in a given count, and how often batters swing at their pitches in those counts. This is kind of obvious, but if you attack the zone, you will get relatively more called strikes than called balls.

Anyway, the table below gives the percentage of called strikes on first pitches not offered at, and how many standard deviations that is above or below the mean. The next column is the percent of total pitches that are offered at, put in play or fouled off, and finally how many standard deviations that is above or below the mean.

As you can see, no CL team can touch the Yomiuri Giants when it comes to getting called first strikes, even though opposing batters offer at only slightly more first pitches than average.

In my previous research, I mentioned that the Swallows get called strikes the hard way, by actually throwing strikes, which is born out by the fact that opposing batters offer at their first pitches with runners in scoring position at a rate that is nearly two standard deviations above the mean.

The Dragons don’t get called strikes because they are not attacking the zone, but if any team out there has reason to complain it would be the Hanshin Tigers, who throw pitches that batters go after, but can’t get called strikes to save their lives.

Roki rocking his slider

Some of you may remember that last year, the big thing people were looking forward to from Roki Sasaki, other than the announcement of when he would take off for MLB, was the sweeper he ostensibly picked up while playing for Japan in the World Baseball Classic.

Injuries aside, last year and this have been filled with ups and downs for Sasaki. But having sorted out my pitch database the past month or so, I can speak objectively about what has and hasn’t been working for him.

On Friday, Sasaki threw 40 sliders, the most he’s thrown in a game in his career, the top four of which have all come this season.

On a pitch-per-pitch basis, the slider has been Sasaki’s most effective weapon, decreasing run expectation by 1.7 percent every time he’s thrown it. The forkball, which from 2021 to 2023 was his money pitch, has this year been his worst.

Until this year, the slider was generally a dropping pitch with glove-side run that he threw more to right-handed hitters instead of the forkball, but the new sweeper is something he’s throwing more to lefties, and in all counts.

By introducing that, Sasaki has added another dimension to his game. I haven’t mentioned the fastball, which fast, is not otherwise remarkable, but when batters have to be on the lookout for another pitch that works, the fastball was as effective as ever.

Below is a screen shot of my current project, data pages for analyzing pitchers. It’s still a work in progress and I’ve already decided against the format below, because it’s hard as hell to read. I definitely want to display which pitches a guy uses to attack left-handers and right-handers in different counts, and how effective that is.

I’ll be able to tell you how often a pitcher gets called balls and strikes, swinging and foul strikes and so on.