Welcome emergency workers

I mentioned this in today’s newsletter, which is only available to free and paid subscribers and people who sign up for it using the form at the bottom of this post, but for a week now, non-resident pro baseball and soccer players and coaches have been able to enter Japan under a government visa-entry exemption that is generally used for emergency workers in disasters that uses Japan’s hosting this summer’s Olympics as the rationale behind that nonsense.

So this past weekend, the BayStars guys all arrived — including new import Fernando Romero, who tested positive for the coronavirus at Narita Airport.

Today’s headlines are filled with the flood of new arrivals, as all the non-resident “emergency” players began arriving.

• 4 Giants, including new imports Smoak and Thames arrive.
• Rakuten’s new imports, Castillo, Dickson arrive.
• New Nippon Ham import Erlin arrives.

So that’s four teams, more will follow.

Ono to start Dragons’ home opener on Tuesday

Sawamura Award-winning lefty Yudai Ono was named to start for the Chunichi Dragons at Nagoya’s Vantelin Dome against the Giants on Tuesday against Angel Sanchez, so it will be fun to watch what adjustments opponents make to him this year.

The Carp-Tigers matchup should be good, too, with two of last season’s best pitchers, Hiroshima’s 2020 rookie of the year Masato Morishita and Hanshin’s Yuki Nishi.

Starting pitchers

(All results given are for 2020)

Pacific League

Fighters vs Lions: Sapporo Dome 6:30 pm, 5:30 am EDT

Ryusei Kawano (3-5, 5.07) vs Wataru Matsumoto (6-7, 4.37)

Marines vs Eagles: Zozo Marine Stadium 5:45 pm, 4:45 am EDT

Kazuya Ojima (7-8, 3.73) vs Takayuki Kishi (7-0, 3.21)

Buffaloes vs Hawks: Kyocera Dome 6 pm, 5 am EDT

Daiki Tajima (4-6, 4.05) vs Shunsuke Kasaya (4-4, 2.84)

Central League

BayStars vs Swallows: Yokohama Stadium 5:45 pm, 4:45 am EDT

Shinichi Onuki (10-6, 2.53) vs Albert Suarez (4-4, 2.67)

Dragons vs Giants: Vantelin Dome 6:15 pm, 5:15 am EDT

Yudai Ono (11-6, 1.82) vs Angel Sanchez (8-4, 3.08)

Carp vs Tigers: Mazda Stadium 6 pm, 5 am EDT

Masato Morishita (10-3, 1.91) vs Yuki Nishi (11-5, 2.26)

Active roster moves 3/29/2021

Deactivated players can be re-activated from 4/8

Central League

Activated

None

Dectivated

BayStars	P	59	Kentaro Taira
Swallows	P	11	Yasunobu Okugawa
Swallows	OF	42	Tomotaka Sakaguchi

Pacific League

Activated

None

Dectivated

Marines	OF	38	Akito Takabe
Eagles	P	56	Sora Suzuki