There was a plentiful supply of whoop-ass in Japan Wednesday, when it was not a good night for most of the teams in the top half of their league’s rankings.
Earlier on Wednesday I woke up to some weird talk of people saying stupid things about MLB home run records, and realized Japan regularly partakes in its own record stupidity, and so I had to write about it. We also had the monthly awards, which went to form.
The guns of August
Munetaka Murakami won his third straight CL hitter of the month award, while Shota Imanaga, who went 5-0 while leading the league with 36 innings and a 1.25 ERA. It was his second award of the season after he won for May.
The PL hitter’s award went to Rakuten’s Hiroaki Shimauchi and was also well deserved after he led the PL with a .381 average, 17 runs, 37 hits, 64 total bases, 21 RBIs, and a .660 slugging average. It was the first monthly award for the 11th-year pro.
The pitcher was a kind of a surprise since it went to Orix’s Hiroya Miyagi, who had a 3-1 record rather than Kona Takahashi who went 3-0 with a good ERA. Miyagi threw his first career shutout and led the league with a 1.14 ERA.
Pitcher’s arsenal reports
Starting today, I’m going to begin sharing the fruits of one of my projects, collecting and analyzing pitch-by-pitch data. There’s precious little publicly available, but we can have some fun by seeing how pitchers’ arsenals and individual pitches shape up against other players: I’ll be talking about whether pitches are thrown ahead or behind in counts, how effective they are — not just in final results but also in contributing to better counts, how often their missed, called for strikes or put into play.
OK, so let’s get to the games, the starting pitchers for Thursday and more.
Giants 18, BayStars 3: At Tokyo Dome, Adam Walker hit a fourth-inning grand slam, Gregory Polanco added a three-run homer in the same nine-run inning, and added a two-run shot, his 21st, in a five-run seventh. Giants rookie Iori Yamasaki (5-4) allowed a run over seven innings, while DeNA starter Haruhiro Hamaguchi (7-5) allowed 11 runs on 10 hits and two walks over 3-2/3 innings. Ouch.
Despite the crushing defeat, DeNA remained seven games back of Yakult, who got a little taste of that medicine, too.
Tigers 7, Swallows 1: At Koshien Stadium, Masashi Ito (9-5), who gave up a three-run homer to Munetaka Murakami in his Aug. 17 loss to the Swallows in Tokyo, became the first pitcher to handcuff the monster for an entire game in a long time. Having reached base in each of his previous 30 games, Murakami went 0-for-3 as Ito allowed a run on five hits and no walks while striking out six over the distance.
Masashi Ito arsenal
Here’s a breakdown of Ito’s pitches with the average Runs Created with every pitch thrown, the rate of swings that miss bats, and the rate of taken pitches called strikes.
| Pitch | RC | Total | Miss rate | Called rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fastball | .0136 | 611 | .10 | .47 |
| Cutter | .0127 | 364 | .13 | .34 |
| Two-seam | .0196 | 329 | .20 | .40 |
| Curve | .0239 | 151 | .19 | .35 |
| Change | .0357 | 151 | .28 | .20 |
The median RC per fastball (600+) thrown in Japan this year is .0259. Ito’s is No. 1, even though he is a bit below the .13 miss median, he is No. 1 in called strike percentage. What that tells me is he is really good at hitting corners.
These values are not defense or park corrected, yet, so there may be some modifications to make in the values.
Yakult’s Hirotoshi Takanashi (7-7) blew up in a six-run fourth inning, when back-to-back walks made it 1-0 with no outs, Ryutaro Umeno followed with a two-run single, Ito sacrificed and Takumu Nakano walked. New pitcher Ryota Konno got a pop up for the second out before surrendering Koji Chikamoto’s three-run triple.
Ito later added a two-run double for good measure.
Carp 3, Dragons 1: At Nagoya Dome, Hiroshima stayed a game behind Hanshin and a game ahead of Yomiuri as Shohei Mori, Hiroshima’s second draft pick last year, allowed a run over five innings in his first career start and earn his first win after a shaky start.
Yohhei Oshima followed a leadoff walk with an RBI double, and Mori pitched out of a second-inning jam, but Ryoma Nishikawa’s RBI double tied it in the fourth off Takahiro Matsuba (6-6), and Shogo Sakakura’s two-out two-run bases-loaded single off Hiroto Fuku put the visitors in front.
Eagles 4, Hawks 3: At Fukuoka Dome, Wataru Karashima (5-3) allowed a run on seven hits and a walk and left with a 3-1 lead with one on and one out in the sixth, while the Eagles chipped away a run here and a run there against Shuta Ishikawa (5-9). Tsuyoshi Yamasaki singled in the first, stole second and Hideto Asamura singled him home.
Hikaru Ota walked in the fifth and scored on an error, and then made it 3-0 by singling in Ryosuke Tatsumi in the sixth. Alfredo Despaigne hit a sixth-inning solo home run, but Tatsumi singled and scored in the eighth. Yuki Matsui saved his 29th game, although Akira Nakamura made it a one-run game with two outs in the ninth with a two-run homer.
Marines 7, Lions 1: At Seibu Dome, Koki Yamaguchi started the whoop-ass with a first-inning three-run homer, his 10th, off Chihiro Sumida (1-9). Seiya Inoue homered in the third. Rookie Shoma Sato (2-5) retired the first nine Lions, gave up a pair of no-out singles and gave up one run as he retired the last six batters he faced. Inoue doubled and scored in the fifth, and doubled in two runs in the sixth to complete the rout.
Fighters 3, Buffaloes 2, At Sapporo Dome, Bryan Rodriguez (2-2), Nippon Ham’s fourth pitcher, worked a 1-2-3 seventh inning, and Kensuke Kondo broke a 2-2 tie in the bottom of the inning with an RBI single off reliever Ryo Yoshida (0-1). The Buffaloes then threatened in the top of the eighth against Jedi mind control master Kazutomo Iguchi, whose force was very strong.
Iguchi hit the leadoff hitter, Shuhei Fukuda, a single to Keita Inagawa, and then a booming drive off the right-field wall to Masataka Yoshida. Right fielder Chusei Mannami decoyed a catch on a ball hit 10 feet over his head, Fukuda bought it and tagged up at second. Mannami then played the ball well off the wall to hold him at third, and leaving Yoshida talking to himself at first base after blasting a sure-fire RBI double.
Iguchi struck out the Elmore Leonard gang, Yuma Tongu and Yuma Mune, before a fly out ended the inning.
“Sure, a mistake is a mistake, and because of that it’s 100 percent on my side, on the lack of proper coaching. Some things have to be done, and that means is we have to keep telling people over and over.”
–Buffaloes manager Satoshi Nakajima.
Thursday’s starting pitchers
Marines vs Fighters: Chiba Marine Stadium 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Manabu Mima (7-6, 3.42) vs Conner Menez (0-0, 1.26)
Lions vs Buffaloes: Seibu Dome 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Katsunori Hirai (6-6, 2.64) vs Ren Mukunoki (2-1, 1.10)
Hawks vs Eagles: Fukuoka Dome 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Colin Rea (5-4, 3.83) vs Hideaki Wakui (3-1, 2.88)
Giants vs BayStars: Tokyo Dome 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Haruto Inoue (0-1, 5.65) vs Fernando Romero (5-7, 4.85)
Dragons vs Carp: Nagoya Dome 6 pm, 5 am EDT
Kotaro Ueda (0-4, 3.09) vs Masato Morishita (10-6, 3.01)
Active roster moves 9/7/2022
Deactivated players can be re-activated from 9/17
Central League
Activated
| Tigers | P | 48 | Yukiya Saito |
| Giants | P | 19 | Iori Yamasaki |
| Carp | P | 16 | Shohei Mori |
Deactivated
| Giants | P | 57 | Kyosuke Takagi |
Pacific League
Activated
| Buffaloes | P | 21 | Daichi Takeyasu |
| Marines | P | 64 | Shoma Sato |
| Eagles | OF | 8 | Ryosuke Tatsumi |
| Fighters | P | 20 | Kenta Uehara |
| Lions | IF | 31 | Shota Hiranuma |
Deactivated
| Buffaloes | P | 57 | Nobuyoshi Yamada |
| Eagles | P | 53 | Hosei Takata |
| Eagles | OF | 51 | Yuya Ogo |
| Lions | IF | 5 | Shuta Tonosaki |
