It’s Thursday in Japan, and we might be able to guess one condition on the very unusual Masataka Yoshida posting, while Shohei Ohtani said he intends to play for Japan in the World Baseball Classic, which now means Samurai Japan is waiting to see if Yu Darvish and Seiya Suzuki follow suit.
All three have expressed interest, all three of their teams have given the green light, and all three are represented by Wasserman’s Joel Wolfe, who shed some light on their concerns at last week’s General manager meetings.
OK. I’ve been through a pair of Japan Baseball Weekly Podcast prediction shows, the first of which dropped last week regarding the PL, and the second, on the CL is to come out Monday, but time to do the necessary research in time for the shows is tight, and it’s hard to do as much as one would like.
I’m not a fan of predictions, because there are hundreds of things we can’t possibly know about a season even when it’s in progress, and to try and pick the winners in advance is little more than a fool’s errand. But here I go.
I basically looked for indicators of future success, based on what NPB teams have done in the past, and try and apply that to the teams from 2021 and see how they stack up.
