Lotte Marines right-hander Ayumu Ishikawa on Wednesday joined the line of players desiring to move to the majors via the posting system. On Thursday, Katsumi Kawai, the Marines’ owner’s proxy, gave a diplomatic response.
“As a team, our No. 1 desire is that our players aspire toward ambitious targets. It’s natural for us to encourage him,” Kawai said as the club’s office closed up shop for the year according to multiple media sources.
“For a player to do that, he must show effort and results.”
The 31-year-old Ishikawa expressed his desire to play abroad at a press conference announcing his 2020 contract. Ishikawa posted a 3.64 ERA and went 8-5 in 27 games last season, and received a 10 million yen ($80,000) pay cut.
“I told them I want to play in America, but before that, I want to get good results in Japan,” he said.
Buffaloes make former Olympian NPB’s 1st female scout
The Orix Buffaloes have moved former Olympic softball champion Emi Inui from the club’s “community group” into the team’s amateur scouting department.
The 36-year-old, who won a gold medal at the 2008 Bejing Olympics and a bronze medal in 2004, had been coaching youngsters at the Buffaloes’ youth academy. She becomes the first woman to be officially hired as a scout in NPB.
Moore concludes SoftBank connection
The SoftBank Hawks on Thursday announced the acquisition of lefty Matt Moore. My story on Moore is HERE. Although they have finished runner-up in Japan’s Pacific League the last two seasons, the SoftBank Hawks have been unstoppable in the postseason, winning the last three Japan Series and five of the last six.
MLB Network’s Jon Heyman has reported Moore’s deal is worth $3.5 million with escalators.
Matt Moore with SoftBank Hawks: 3.5M. Can make up to 6M.
The Toronto Blue Jays hit pay dirt on with what appears to be a cost-effective two-year contract for right-hander Shun Yamaguchi. The deal, as reported by Sankei Sports Wednesday morning in Japan, will be for $6 million.
Yamaguchi, who joined the Yomiuri Giants of Japan’s Central League three years ago as a free agent from the DeNA BayStars, is the first player ever posted by the Giants, Japan’s oldest pro team.
My profile of Yamaguchi is HERE. He is coming off a career year in 2019 when he tied for the Central League in wins with 15 as the Giants won their first pennant since 2013.
Although pundits are saying Yamaguchi could be effective as a reliever, should know that the reason he became a starter was that he developed a case of the yips as a reliever and became ineffective. The switch back to starter allowed him to develop his other pitches — a development that was accelerated during his time with the Giants.
Part of that metamorphosis was also likely due to his needing a new challenge, something pitching in the majors will provide in any context.
According to the SanSPo story, Yamaguchi will fly directly to Canada from Hawaii, where he had been with the rest of the Giants on their customary “victory vacation.”
Yamaguchi opens posting door for Sugano
The Giants had been staunchly opposed to using the posting system since the days of powerful former owner Tsuneo Watanabe but included a provision to post Yamaguchi as part of the three-year contract that saw him move from Yokohama to Tokyo. Since then, mixed signals have been coming from Yomiuri.
The same week the team’s owner passed off Yamaguchi’s posting as a one-time thing, Team president Tsukasa Imamura admitted the team had accepted the pitcher’s desire to be posted when he joined them as a free agent, saying, “no time was fixed for posting but that it was agreed to” according to a Daily Sports story.
Imamura added that it would now be incumbent on the team to evaluate other players’ wishes to be posted and named two-time Sawamura Award-winner Tomoyuki Sugano as a player who might fit that bill, mentioning that the right-hander had already sacrificed a year of his pro career in order to join the Giants as an amateur.
Rafael Dolis, the closer for the CL’s Hanshin Tigers until Kyuji Fujikawa‘s ninth-inning resurrection this past summer, is apparently moving on in search of a major league contract according to this story in the Daily Sports, which said the Tigers gave up on contract talks on Tuesday.
After saving 88 games over the previous 2-1/2 seasons, Dolis lost two games in June and was removed from the ninth-inning firing line and replaced by the remarkable Kyuji Fujikawa in July.
Except for a few hiccups, the 31-year-old Dolis was essentially as effective in 2019 as he had been in his three previous seasons.
In related news, the Daily Sports also reported with 31-year-old right-hander Jon Edwards. In 49 major league games as a reliever with the Rangers, Padres and Indians, Edwards is 2-0 with a 3.67 ERA over 41-2/3 innings.
The video says “1st start” but it was Edwards’ first game in relief.
He has a 3.08 ERA over 131-1/3 career Triple-A innings with 30 saves and an 11-4 record. His 11.4 strikeouts per nine innings this year with Columbus was the worst figure of his Triple-A career. Using the lively major league ball introduced this season in Triple-A, Edwards allowed seven of his 10 career home runs over 49 innings.
