Tag Archives: Hideki Kuriyama

Baseball, Commentary, Free, News, Paid Content

NPB games, news of July 20, 2019

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The Fighters won their second straight game with a limited-use starting pitcher, a guy who is not intended to pitch to more than 18 opposing batters. I haven’t heard a lot of flack about it like I’ve heard about DeNA manager Alex Ramirez’s batting orders, but that might be because I’m not listening hard enough.

The split personality of Hideki Kuriyama

I’m thinking about how I might conduct a study about the efficiency of Fighters skipper Hideki Kuriyama’s method, but that might take a while. In the meantime it’s worth noting that Kuriyama, who loves to stand back and sort of encourage people to consider him the smartest person in the room without saying it, is kind of bipolar.

When Shohei Ohtani was at his peak in 2016, Kuriyama took credit for keeping Ohtani’s workload down and being strict about letting him play hurt, since Ohtani would try to bluff his way into playing when he was dealing with physical issues.

Kuriyama told a Tokyo press conference, “You have to be strict with players because they’ll try to play when they’re hurt. You have to step in.”

But the same manager who was so fastidious about protecting his players let Yang Dai-kang play with broken ribs in the heat of a pennant race without a day off for roughly a month.

In that case, it was a matter of “don’t ask don’t tell,” in which Kuriyama, the team’s trainer, and Yang were all to blame, because nobody was willing to be the adult in the room and say he shouldn’t play.

The trainer said, “Yang said he could play.” The manager repeated that when asked. The Fighters’ reporters were discouraged from following up a story from Taiwan that reported Yang was being compelled to play when hurt.

Having been asked about the situation by Yang’s agent at the start of September, I recommended Kyodo News’ beat writer ask the trainer, the player and the manager what was going on. That day, Yang got his first day off in nearly a month and played sparingly for a few days of rest.

Kuriyama is an early adapter in some areas, but at the same time, he’s pushing some seemingly very dumb ideas — like using closer Ryo Akiyoshi to pitch with a four-run lead on Saturday.

To be fair, Akiyoshi had the day off on Friday, but Akiyoshi has now appeared in 32 games for the Fighters and more than a quarter of those have been three-run save situations or games in which the Fighters have led by more than three runs.

Pacific League

Fighters 4, Marines 0

At Sapporo Dome, Hiroshi Urano (3-1) sparkled so well, striking out seven batters, in his 18-batter starting role that he ended up facing 20 over six innings. It was the first time a Fighters starter other than Kohei Arihara has gone six innings since June 18, when the Fighters’ other long starter, Naoyuki Uwasawa had a kneecap fractured by a line drive.

Chihaya Sasaki (1-1) pitched OK for the Marines, but the game unraveled in a four-run fourth.

The game highlights are HERE.

Eagles 1, Hawks 0

At Rakuten Seimei Park, an unearned run in the eighth inning made the difference in a pitchers’ duel with nine different hurlers on the mound. Rakuten’s Yoshinao Kamata and SoftBank’s Tsuyoshi Wada each struck out six without getting out of the fifth inning.

The Hawks, who led the Fighters by seven games after the all-star break, now lead by two, having lost six straight games.

A night after Hawks skipper Kimiyasu Kudo response to his team’s not hitting was to sarcastically say the coaches needed to a better job, he simply said, “It isn’t for a lack of scoring opportunities. The hope that the batters will get motivated is now sustaining me, and I’m waiting for it to happen.”

The game highlights are HERE.

Buffaloes 3, Lions 1

At MetLife Dome, 24-year-old rookie right-hander Daichi Takeyasu (2-0), the Hanshin Tigers’ third pick in the 2015 draft, allowed a run over seven innings. Takeyasu was acquired over the winter by Orix as part of the compensation package for starting pitcher Yuki Nishi’s defection to Hanshin as a free agent.

Shinsaburo Tawata (1-4), fit to pitch for the first time since May 25, allowed just three runs over six innings in which he allowed nine hits, a walk and a hit batsman, while striking out four.

Masataka Yoshida’s 16th home run broke a sixth-inning tie for the Buffaloes, and Brandon Dickson, who blew the save on Friday night bounced back with a 1-2-3 ninth to earn his eighth save since being pressed into the closer’s role on June 19.

The game highlights are HERE.

Central League

Carp 4, Giants 2

At Mazda Stadium, Hiroshima’s Xavier Batista turned the game around with a pair of two-run home runs. He tied it in the sixth and put his team in front in the eighth against new Giant Rubby De La Rosa, handing Yomiuri its third-straight loss.

BayStars 4, Dragons 3

At Yokohama Stadium, lefty Kenta Ishida (1-0) struck out eight over five innings, while allowing a hit and a walk in his first start of the season as DeNA beat Daisuke Yamai (3-4) for the first time in three seasons.

The maligned top of the BayStars batting order did almost all the damage in a four-run third. With two outs and a runner on, leadoff hitter Yamato Maeda singled, Japan cleanup hitter Yoshitomo “doesn’t belong in the No. 2 spot because he’s a power hitter in the DH-less CL” Tsutsugo walked.
Neftali Soto doubled in two runs to make it 2-0, and Jose Lopez singled in two more.

Tigers 4, Swallows 3

At Koshien Stadium, Hanshin starter Haruto Takahashi struck out 10 over seven innings, and Yakult wasted a chance to score more than the tying run off Rafael Dolis (4-3) and paid the price in the bottom of the ninth, when Hanshin rallied to win it against David Huff (1-2).

The Tigers scored twice in the eighth to take the lead, and pinch hitter Fumiya Hojo keyed a ninth-inning rally with a leadoff double in the ninth.

News

Hamstring KOs former Cub Wada

Tsuyoshi Wada limped off in the fifth inning of Saturday’s start against the Rakuten Eagles after feeling discomfort in his right hamstring.

It was the second-straight game the 38-year-old had made an early exit due to lower-body issues. This one, he said, was caused by poor traction on the mound in a game that was delayed by rain in Sendai.

“There was a lot of dirt sticking to the bottom of my spikes,” he said. “It’s my mistake for not taking it off. The trouble is just like what hindered me last time. I owe everyone an apology.”

Wada needed a little bit of luck in the game, missing with a fastball down the pipe with two on and one out in the second that Zelous Wheeler lined to the left fielder for an out. The lefty was not as sharp as he’s been for most of the season, but was still entertaining in his ability to lure batters out of their approaches and get them to swing at his pitches.

Baseball, Commentary, Hall of Fame, History

Kuriyama tip toes through Japan’s history minefield

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Fighters manager Hideki Kuriyama scratched the surface of baseball history on Wednesday with his 527th victory with the Nippon Ham Fighters.

In the Nikkan Sports online edition for May 8, Daisuke Yamashita used Kuriyama’s achievement to provide some insight into history’s web as he moved past Hall of Fame manager Shigeru Mizuhara as No. 2 in career wins with the franchise.

The original story in Japanese is HERE.

While Yamashita does a good job of explaining Kuriyama’s appreciation of Mizuhara’s legacy, the whole exercise represents another example of Japan’s difficult relationship with history and tradition.

In itself, Kuriyama’s achievement is akin to passing Babe Ruth on the Red Sox’s all-time home run list, because Mizuhara is better known as the man who laid the foundation’s for the most successful period in the history of the Yomiuri Giants.

The franchise that from 1954 to 1972 was known as the Toei Flyers, whose principle owner was the Toei movie studio, was taken over by Nippon Ham in 1974.

Mizuhara quit the Giants after Yomiuri’s founder, Matsutaro Shoriki said the skipper had brought shame on the Giants in 1960 for losing the Central League pennant after five-straight championships. Extra credit to you if that sentence summons an image of former Giants owner Tsuneo Watanabe and Hall of Fame manager Tatsunori Hara.

Unlike Hara, who waited for a second chance with Yomiuri, Mizuhara jumped to the Pacific League’s flyers in 1961, managed them to their second consecutive runner-up finish before winning the franchise’s first title the following year.

To return to the present, Kuriyama spoke of Mizuhara and his great rival, Osamu Mihara, who never managed the franchise, but who was the team’s first president under Nippon Ham in 1974. Mihara had been supplanted as Giants manager by Mizuhara, and who – after building the Nishitetsu Lions into a PL powerhouse – sparked Mizuhara’s Yomiuri exodus in 1960 by winning the CL pennant with the unheralded Taiyo Whales.

“They were baseball’s founding fathers. I think of them together, Mr. Mihara and Mr. Mizuhara, as belonging to that one era,” Yamashita quoted Kuriyama as saying after Wednesday’s 1-0 win over the Orix Buffaloes.

According to Yamashita, Kuriyama, a lover of history, spent time over the offseason reading Japanese classic history texts, the “Kojiki” and the “Nihon Shoki.”

“Pretty much everything that happens is something someone has experienced in the past. Things really don’t change that much. I’m going looking in those texts,” Kuriyama has said according to Yamashita.

The best part of the story is that while the word “history” is often dragged out as a tired excuse for doing something unimaginative, Kuriyama has shown he is not terribly interested in defending old ways. The same man who conceived of – or at least takes credit for – the idea that Shohei Ohtani might both hit and pitch, is this season adopting extreme defensive shifts and experimenting with different starting pitching and relieving assignments.

In referencing both Mihara and Mizuhara, Kuriyama both speaks to his own nature while still paying his respects to Japanese baseball’s creed that eliminating negatives equals a positive.

Mizuhara, an unrelenting perfectionist, in ways represents the popular notion that zero defects is perfection, while Mihara, a brash innovator, represents, I think, more of Kuriyama’s true nature as someone who strives to be an early adaptor on the cutting edge.

It’s a difficult balance to strike in Japan, because innovation carries the possibility of an implied criticism of how things were done before by the game’s greats.

Less-established innovators who fail to pay lip service to their esteemed predecessors by kissing dogma’s ass, often end up being cast out for their trouble. The trick is to do things differently, while making excuses for it, and not appearing to be too proud about having coming up with something different and giving everyone else credit. So far, it’s been working for Kuriyama.