We had a pair of new manager hirings announced Friday. The Hiroshima Carp, who had been sort of silent as they stood in the wake of Shinji Sasaoka’s outgoing second-hand smoke trail, reached, as Jason Coskrey of the Japan Times put it, into the OB bag, and pulled out Takahiro Arai to be their next skipper, while the Lotte Marines went for continuity and chose their thoughtful and funny pitching coordinator, former Mets, Rockies, and Expos pitcher Masato Yoshii.
But while Yoshii’s hiring makes perfect sense for a team keen to have a plan, it makes one wonder what in the heck the team’s owner was saying about a careful and thorough search.
With all the regular season games complete, more players who were hoping to be back with their teams next year have been informed that those teams have different plans.
On Tuesday, amurai Japan manager Hideki Kuriyama announced his squad for four November games that will help him prepare for March’s World Baseball Classic, with the big news out of that being how a lot of top players were not on the list, and I don’t just mean the MLB guys who are not eligible until March.
We also had news about Tatsunori Hara’s desire to manage the Yomiuri Giants next season despite the team’s failings, and some thoughts on a possible replacement for Tadahito Iguchi with the Lotte Marines.
Meanwhile the SoftBank Hawks have named their starting pitcher for the first stage of the Pacific League’s Preclimax series against the Seibu Lions starting Saturday.
