Samurai Japan manager Hideki Kuriyama announced the first 12 players for his preliminary 30-man World Baseball Classic roster on Friday, a list that included the first three of Japan’s MLB players to commit, Shohei Ohtani, Yu Darvish and Seiya Suzuki.
They were joined by some obvious choices, Japan’s back-to-back MVPS, the Central League’s triple crown-winning Yakult Swallows third baseman Munetaka Murakami, and Pacific League pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who also grabbed his second straight Sawamura Award last autumn.
Roki Sasaki, too, made the first list of what will in the end include 30 names for the March tourney.
As some of you know, I was on CNN World Sport Sunday pretty much being a blithering moron while trying to sound intelligent about Roki Sasaki and utterly failing.
Well at least I didn’t get angry about it…
Sunday, of course, Sasaki gave up his first hits and runs in three weeks, annoyed the heck out of an umpire, but left after five innings. As has become the case, Marines manager Tadahito Iguchi said Sunday that his next start had not been decided, and on Monday, Sasaki was deactivated.
We also had Yu Darvish chiming on umpire Kazuyuki Shirai’s brief spat with Sasaki, which was not exactly as I expected.
