The selectors in charge of picking the next Samurai Japan manager have leaked the news that they have settled on Hirokazu Ibata to manage Japan at the 2026 World Baseball Classic.
Despite that, NPB secretary general Atsushi Ihara, who is in charge of the committee, said there was nothing to talk about at this time. I can’t say I blame him. I have nothing bad to say about Ibata, but considering there are many guys around who have successfully managed at the pro level, Ibata’s selection seems like something NPB is not going to be eager to talk about.
The search was supposed to be over in August, but the process was reportedly “difficult.” Kimiyasu Kudo was at one point reported as the choice. Instead, the job is going to Ibata, who won seven Central League Golden Gloves at shortstop. Ibata has coached Japan’s current Under-12 national team skipper has never managed professionals before, making him the third Samurai Japan skipper to manage his first game in charge of the national team, following Hiroki Kokubo and Atsunori Inaba.
Inaba managed in the Olympics but not the WBC, because the 2021 tourney was postponed, and that job passed on to Hideki Kuriyama. Kokubo had never even coached when Sadaharu Oh pressed NPB to hire him for the 2017 WBC, and he was pretty bad. Inaba had at least coached for years, and had been Kokubo’s batting coach. Although Ibata has not managed, unlike Kokubo, he has at least coached in the WBC and for two years for the Yomiuri Giants, so he’s somewhere in between those two.
Japan has had a hard time finding national team managers since the start of the WBC. Oh has said he managed in 2006, because he couldn’t say no after he’d been lobbying Japan’s owners to take part. Tatsunori Hara managed in 2009, when Yomiuri told him to, but after that the well ran dry when SoftBank’s Koji Akiyama turned down the offer for 2013, and NPB decided it could no longer depend on active NPB managers.
They instead turned to Koji Yamamoto, whose lone pennant with the Hiroshima Carp in 1991 –before free agency decimated the talent base of NPB’s most penurious franchise – has been attributed to the work of his head coach, Tsuyoshi Oshita.
Yamamoto’s failure to reach the WBC final for the first time had less to do with his managing and more to do with NPB’s obvious incompetence in the selection process, something that discouraged MLB stars from sacrificing their preparations to play for a poorly organized national team.
Kokubo’s hiring was Oh’s brainchild. Oh said he thought players would respond to Kokubo, who had just retired and was someone closer to their own age, but he really hadn’t developed many of the habits and skills a manager needs. This was obvious in the debacle of the 2015 Premier 12 semifinal, when Kokubo mis-managed the bullpen and blew a big ninth-inning lead to eventual champion South Korea.
And though Kokubo got better at the job, no MLB players signed up to play for him in the 2017 WBC and Japan was eliminated in the semifinals for the second straight time.
Even though Japan hit the jackpot with Hideki Kuriyama this year, no one thinks that the people who wanted him had anything but the most marginal respect for his managing experience.
Kuriyama was no doubt picked not because of his experience with Nippon Ham but because of his relationship with Shohei Ohtani.
In my mind, the two best candidates for the next Japan job would be former Tigers manager Akihiro Yano or former Lions skipper Hatsuhiko Tsuji. I don’t know if either was contacted, but a colleague told me that Tsuji is in line to be the next Chunichi Dragons manager, when Kazuyoshi Tatsunami’s three-year contract expires, and that would make it difficult for him to commit to Japan.
Ibata might be a good choice, but there are plenty of qualified guys, such as former Carp skipper Koichi Ogata, former Swallows manager Mitsuru Manaka, or former Dragons boss Motonobu Tanishige, or even former DeNA skipper Alex Ramirez, guys who’ve done well at the pro level in recent years.
It’s hard to believe none of them were available, so we can only assume that Japan’s landing on a qualified manager for 2023 was more of an accident than any sign that NPB’s selection process is actually maturing.
