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NPB wrap 8-22-21

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Sunday’s games saw Carter Stewart Jr. make his second start for the SoftBank Hawks, Enny Romero make his Pacific League debut two years after he left the Chunichi Dragons, and teammate abuser Sho Nakata slug his first Central League homer after getting a pre-game pep talk from Yomiuri Giants manager emeritus Shigeo Nagashima.

Hawks 4, Marines 2

At Fukuoka’s PayPay Dome, Nobuhiro Matsuda lined a two-out, two-run tie-breaking double to left, as SoftBank salvaged the final game of its home series against Lotte.

Carter Stewart, Jr. made his second start for the Hawks, allowing a run over four innings, but poor location ratcheted up his pitch count. Stewart allowed three hits and walked three while striking out six. A walk to Takashi Ogino and a good swing by Kyota Fujiwara on a low-and-away fastball put the ball in the gap for a third-inning RBI double.

The Hawks did a poor job of turning lefty Enny Romero‘s five walks into runs and tied it on Ryoya Kurihara’s 12th home run in the fourth when they left the bases loaded.

SoftBank submarine right-hander Rei Takahashi walked two batters in the top of the fifth and Brandon Laird put the visitors on top with an RBI single. Two relievers each retired the only batter they faced to end the threat, and the Hawks retaliated against Romero in the home half.

Misaki Mori singled, stole second, was bunted to third and scored on Yuki Yanagita’s sac fly. Kurihara chased Romero with a double. With one out and runners on second and third, righty Yusuke Azuma came up big out of the bullpen, striking out Alfredo Despaigne and Akira Nakamura.

With the game tied after 8-1/2, Frank Herrmann (0-1), who struck out the side in his inning on Saturday, walked Despaigne to open the inning. Pinch-runner Ukyo Shuto took over the PL stolen base lead with his 21st. With two outs, the Marines intentionally walked pinch-hitter Yuya Hasegawa, and Matsuda leaned into a cutter away and drove it over speedster Takashi Ogino’s head in left.

The Marines outfield was playing in, but considering it was hit 10 meters past him, Ogino might not have caught it had he been playing at normal depth, but he would have had a chance of getting the third out or at least holding the Hawks to a run.

Lotte starter Romero was making his Pacific League debut two years after he went 8-10 with a 4.26 ERA for the Central League’s Chunichi Dragons. He’d spent the interim with Tijuana in the Mexican league.

Fighters 2, Eagles 1

At Sapporo Dome, Naoyuki Uwasawa (7-5, 3.25) allowed a run over seven innings, while Nippon Ham scored a run in each of the first two innings against Hideaki Wakui (6-8, 5.17), who was yanked after allowing three hits and two walks over 41 pitches.

The first run scored on an error, a single and a fielder’s choice, before Ronny Rodriguez, who had two hits, tripled in the second and scored on a Yushi Shimizu single. Rakuten made it a one-run game in the fourth on a Hiroaki Shimauchi double and an Eigoro Mogi single.

Rodriguez had a chance to widen the Fighters’ lead in the fifth but fouled out to end the inning with two on.

Bryan Rodriguez worked a scoreless eighth for Nippon Ham, and Toshihiro Sugiura closed it out with his 17th save.

According to Chunichi Sports, Eagles skipper Kazuhisa Ishii said his starter was on a short leash with Wakui expected to focus on one inning at a time after he got shelled the week before against Seibu.

Lions 10, Buffaloes 3

At Kyocera Dome Osaka, Orix’s Sachiya Yamasaki (5-7, 3.45) allowed three straight singles to open the game, and Takeya Nakamura improved on his NPB record for career grand slams with his 21st.

Kaito Yoza (1-1, 4.67) allowed two runs over five innings to win his season’s starting debut. A pair of one-out second-inning walks led to both runs, but I’m guessing Orix missed our last podcast and allowed former closer Hirotoshi Masui to be used in relief, and he coughed up four more runs, three on rookie Junichiro Kishi’s seventh home run and another on a fourth-inning Nakamura double.

Tigers 2, Dragons 0

At Vantelin Dome Nagoya, Hanshin’s Takumi Akiyama (9-4, 2.88) allowed four singles and a walk over seven innings. Mel Rojas Jr. broke the ice with a second-inning solo home run, his third, and two relievers, Suguru Iwazaki and Robert Suarez retired the last six Dragons batters with Suarez earning his 27th save.

Shinnosuke Ogasawara (6-6, 3.12) allowed two runs over eight innings on five hits and a walk. The Tigers got an insurance run in the sixth, when Koji Chikamoto drew a one-out walk, went to third on Takumu Nakano’s weakly hit hit-and-run single and scored on a weak groundout.

The Tigers win moved them two full games ahead of the Yomiuri Giants in the CL standings.

Giants 4, BayStars 4

At Tokyo Dome, Yomiuri hit four home runs, including Sho Nakata’s first in the Central League, and Zelous Wheeler’s 11th in a three-run seventh inning as the Giants came back to tie DeNA.

Yoshihiro Maru hit his 14th in the first inning off lefty Shota Imanaga, who struck out nine over seven innings and had a pair of hits.

Giants lefty Yuki Takahashi surrendered the lead in the fourth. Neftali Soto followed a leadoff walk with his second homer in two days and his 17th of the season to put DeNA in front. Toshiro Miyazaki doubled and scored, and Shugo Maki, whose three-run pinch-hit homer broke open Saturday’s win, singled him home.

Maki drew a leadoff walk in the sixth and scored an insurance run after Imanaga’s second single and a double by Masayuki Kuwahara.

Giants-BayStars highlights

Carp vs Swallows

At Hiroshima’s Mazda Stadium, rained out.

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Active roster moves 8/22/2021

Deactivated players can be re-activated from 9/1

Central League

Activated

GiantsP41Kota Nakagawa
TigersP66Ippei Ogawa
CarpP19Yusuke Nomura
SwallowsP16Juri Hara

Dectivated

GiantsP26Nobutaka Imamura
GiantsP59Toyoki Tanaka
TigersP34Akira Niho
CarpP12Haruki Omichi

Pacific League

Activated

MarinesP91Enny Romero
LionsP44Kaito Yoza

Dectivated

MarinesP76Jose Flores
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The next Carter Stewart?

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When the New York Mets withdrew their offer for Vanderbilt University pitcher Kumar Rocker, their first pick in this year’s June draft, there was speculation he might sign in Japan, following in the footsteps of Carter Stewart Jr., who is also represented by Scott Boras.

In some ways, their cases are similar, Stewart was the eighth overall pick in the 2018 draft, and declined a reduced offer from the Atlanta Braves after they brought up a wrist injury the pitcher said he’d suffered years ago while skateboarding.

Rocker was the 10th pick overall, and the Mets pulled their offer to him after reviewing his medical information. Rocker, ostensibly, is not headed back to school, thus the speculation about Japan.

Japan would make a ton of sense, but it’s still a long shot despite Boras’ presence.

Scott Boras

Boras is a big player, who is on a mission not only to raise the bar for all players in the labor market but also make MLB bigger and better. And while Japan has been a good market for a number of his lower-profile clients prior to Stewart, and he sees it as a profitable source of big-name future clients, sending a marquee amateur to Japan goes against his grain.

Boras may tout Stewart’s deal with the Hawks, reported to be $7 million over six years, but that’s just Boras putting a good spin on a deal that he wanted no part of.

The SoftBank Hawks and Stewart came together by coincidence, through the pitcher’s acquaintance with Hawks scout Matt Skrmetta. When the Hawks came to Stewart and his family with an offer, Boras, according to two sources, tried to talk them out of it.

One source said Boras only reluctantly agreed to the deal after the family discussed dumping him for another agency, CAA.

So while Boras may HINT about Rocker going to Japan, it’s also important to understand that the agent’s agenda is more about reforming MLB. Sending another guy to Japan is at best, Plan B.

Japan: land of opportunity and bottlenecks

While Japanese baseball represents a huge potential opportunity for American amateurs, the operative word is “potential.”

I wrote about this at some length in Winds of change.

Nippon Professional Baseball has guidelines regarding amateur signing bonuses and first contracts — but these only apply to amateur players in Japan and Japanese citizens who have never played in NPB. Other players are simply international talent, free to be signed by any team at any price.

The bottleneck has to do with NPB prohibiting teams from activating more than four imports at any one time, and teams’ poor developmental infrastructure. About half the teams aren’t run to make profits from their baseball — who said NPB and MLB are different? — but are considered an advertising expense for the parent company.

For that reason, most have zero interest in investing big money upfront in the hopes a young overseas amateur can figure out the things all Japanese kids know coming in after a life spent playing ball here.

I’d be surprised if the Hawks and the Yomiuri Giants haven’t at least done their homework on Rocker, and if they did, we should know soon enough.

Japan’s non-waiver acquisition deadline, normally July 31, is — because of the Olympic break — pushed back this year to Aug. 31, which would give Rocker a full year of international service time for the cost of a couple of months of his time.

So stay tuned.

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