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Blowback, bad breaks and Friday’s games

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It’s took two weeks, but the blowback over Yakult manager Takahiro Ikeyama’s heretical disregard of Japan’s sacrifice bunt dogma has begun. The Orix Buffaloes got some bad news, and there were games as well.

Bad break for Buffaloes  

Orix ace Hiroya Miyagi was diagnosed with damage to his ulnar collateral ligament in his left elbow Friday, and the team said it will get a second opinion before proceeding with season-ending surgery. Miyagi threw some absolutely wicked sliders to get two strikeouts with two on and no outs but left after the second strikeout with elbow discomfort.

The diminutive 24-year-old southpaw has struck out 17 batters in 13-1/3 innings this season. He is 50-30 in his career with a 2.51 ERA, has pitched for Japan in each of the last two WBC’s, and was one of the players I was so looking forward to seeing regularly this season.

He’s a delightful guy, and in March at Tokyo Dome, he became the first Japanese player in my 30 years covering baseball here to ask me to give him a high five.

Bunt blowback

“If they (the Swallows) keep playing this way, they’ll finish last,” a “pennant-winning manager” said Thursday according to Ronspo.com.

On Wednesday, former Hanshin Tigers skipper Akinobu Okada questioned Ikeyama’s choices.

“Back when I was managing, the team with the most sacrifice bunts usually won the title. That was the case in 1985, too. It may look like Hanshin won by hitting a lot, but we actually had a high number of sacrifice bunts,” Okada said of the Tigers’ first Japan Series champs, one of two Tigers pennant-winning teams to lead the league in sacrifices. They were first again last year as well, but fourth in sacrifices in 2005, when Okada managed his first CL pennant.

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Japan Rules – and games of April 3, 2026

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Friday saw a closer’s first career blown save and the last unbeaten team’s first loss. Altogether neither of those items are big news in themselves, the way those two games went down would have driven Japan’s curmudgeon corps to fill the next day’s sports pages with uncontrolled rage for skippers failing to conform to Japanese baseball dogma.

That’s because the blown save in the Hawks-Marines game occurred after SoftBank’s starting pitcher was yanked after (just) 117 pitches and eight shutout innings – heresy back in the day, and because Yakult Swallows skipper Takahiro Ikeyama, who has yet to sacrifice this season (Rule violation No. 1), has been batting his pitchers eighth (Rule violation No. 2), and declined to have his pitcher bunt in a sacrifice situation (Rule violation No. 3).

Japan rules and how to follow them

Since becoming a tour guide last year, I have been following Facebook groups about Japan travel and have marveled to read absolute “truths” about Japan and its culture that display a serious lack of awareness of the Japan’s social dynamics.

Since we’re on the topic of rules, Japanese society is incredibly rule-oriented, and social media pundits often interpret this as “Japanese people always follow the rules.” My favorite example is, “Japanese people take their trash home.”

That is the rule, and when out and about many, many Japanese will lug empty Starbucks cups around with them until they get home – provided they don’t first come across a convenience store whose signs read, “No personal trash in our bins,” because that’s often where it goes.

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