スティーブン・ストラスバーグ

今年のメジャードラフト全体指名１位（ワシントン・ナショナルズ）間違いなしで、去年の北京五輪アメリカ代表唯一のアマチュア選手だったサンディエゴ州立大学のスティーブン・ストラスバーグは、今大学シーズン３回登板しています。そして、その成績が：

20.1回　13安打　5失点　4自責点　4四球　45奪三振(!)　1本塁打　3勝0敗

20.1IP で45/4 K/BB ですよ、天文学的にロケットでアフォな数字です。

ただ、モーションがプライアー、スモルツ、ボンダーマン、バーネット他似だそうなので、将来怪我の心配はかなりあるそうです。

それにしても、また楽しみな若手が出てきましたね。

おまけに先週の試合では7回も102マイル(164キロ!)を記録してるそうです。

Chicken

Academic Research Paper 

http://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf

Asia League playoffs update

One semifinals ended in a sweep as the Seibu Prince Rabbits fought tooth and nails to win over the Oji Eagles in 4 straight (though all were 1-2 goal games that could’ve gone either way). The other semifinal is going the distance in a seesaw battle with top seed Anyang Halla and Nippon Paper Cranes exchanging wins each other game (Halla seems to have recovered nicely from the 0-9 drubbing in game 4). (Playoff bracket, playoff gamesheets) Joe Prpic was critical to many of the Seibu goals, and the Prpic-Fujita veteran powerplay unit was in top gear.

The rubber match between Halla and the Cranes goes Saturday night to decide who will get to play the well rested Bunnies on their swan song.

Some videos and photos from the Seibu – Oji games 1 and 2 that I went to see in Higashifushimi, Tokyo.

Signed thank you sweaters of long time Seibu/Kokudo workhorse stars Ryan Kiyoshi Fujita, Joel Prpic, and Takahito Suzuki.

More photos and videos after this break:

Korea 9 – 0 Taiwan

The non-story in the WBC today was Korea thrashing Taiwan 9-0. Well, the Taiwanese starter could not find the strike zone. Taiwan starter C. Lee had one of the wildest outings I’ve ever seen with a 0.1IP 2H 6ER 3BB 1HBP 1GrandSlam (and he seemed to only hit the strike zone about 10-20% of the time).

Game 2 of the Asia Round determines the winners and losers brackets. Saturday, Japan will face Korea in the nightcap in the Japan/East Sea rivalry and depleted Taiwan will attempt to avenge their Beijing Olympics loss to China in the day game in the battle of the Taiwan strait. 

The announced crowd was a little north of 12,000, I should’ve set the over/under at 15,000 instead of 20,000, but I got it right nonetheless  😛

Both the Korean and Taiwanese crowds were small in number but pretty loud, creating decent atmosphere. Attendance for non-Japanese games seems to be better than the Asia Series. Must be the marketing and the national teams factor.

There seemed to be a couple of nationalistic incidents where both Korean and Taiwanese fans displayed large banners and were told by security to withdraw them. The Taiwan banner (we were sitting in the Taiwan section) clearly spelled out “Taiwan” (台湾) in Chinese characters (hanzi), so this may have had something to do with the no politics in the WBC policy.

Photos after this break: