BayStars games online

In addition to Yahoo! Japan broadcasting all Pacific League games online, all Yokohama BayStars home games at Yokohama Stadium have also become available online starting this season. The PL games are IP restricted, so you need to work around that if you live outside of Japan (myp2p.eu is one option), I’m not sure about the BayStars home games.

EDIT: The BayStars online service seems to only provide video by half-inning (which is a pain) and appears to be tape delayed by 20 minutes at least. Then again, if you avoid Japanese sports news, then this might as well be live on gameday.

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2009, Homerun Heaven?

It seems like we’ve seen a lot of homeruns so far in the 2009 NPB season what with all the 3 homer games (with Kanemoto doing it twice in 3 days!). Is the ball livelier this season? And if so why would Japanese baseball go in the opposite direction from international standards?

Anyways, it’s still early going, but I compared the number of homeruns with last year’s figure and here’s what I got (before today’s games).

CL 2009: 37 Games 71 HR = 1.92 HR/G

PL 2009: 37 Games 69 HR = 1.86 HR/G

CL 2008: 1.69 HR/G

PL 2008: 1.74 HR/G

So, CL has seen a whopping 14% increase in homeruns (with the bigger park in Hiroshima to boot!), and PL has seen a 7% increase. 37 games is still too small a sample size, so we may see the homerun rates regress to 2008 levels, but we are definitely seeing more homeruns in early 2009. Are teams ordering more tightly wound balls? Who knows. It’s interesting that more homers were hit in the bigger PL parks last season than the CL with a couple of bandboxes (Hiroshima, Yokohama) and a homer friendly Tokyo Dome. This probably needs deeper digging before making any conclusions.

The Four Lions of Asia

The possibility is remote, but it is there.

The Four Lions Asia Series (official site – Japanese).

Let’s take a look at the 4 leagues that participate in this Asian club baseball championship and how their Lions are faring as this post is being written.

CBL (China)

The Tianjin Lions have won the championship series 3-1 over the Beijing Tigers, thus being the first Lions team to clinch their spot in the 2008 Asia Series. In 2008, the CBL is being represented for the first time by a club team instead of the China Stars selects team, thus enabling the possibility of this Lions Battle Royale.  

 

CPBL (Taiwan)

The match fixing scandal tainted league’s 2008 regular season 1st place team is the Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions. The Lions must win the upcoming Taiwan Series against the Brother Elephants – LaNew Bears (1-0 right now in the best-of-5 series) semifinal winner.

 

KBO (Korea)

The Samsung Lions defeated the Lotte Giants in the first round of the playoffs, and are now tied 1-1 against the Doosan Bears in the best-of-7 semifinals. The Lions must win this series first before challenging the powerful SK Wyverns in the Korea Series.

 

NPB (Japan)

The Saitama Seibu Lions are currently leading the Pacific League championship series (or Climax Series stage 2) by a margin of 2-0 in a best-of-7 game series with the 10-3 thrashing of the 3rd place Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters yesterday. The series can only go maximum 6 games due to the first place Lions having entered the series with a 1-0 advantage. The Lions must defeat the Darvish-armed Fighters by winning 2 of the next 5 games, then win agaist the Central League champions (reigning Japan Series champs Chunichi Dragons, slumping Hanshin Tigers, or red hot Yomiuri Giants) in the Japan Series.

 

Now, if you’re a neutral baseball fan, or a Lions fan, or your team’s already out of the playoff picture in any of these countries, how could you not cheer for the King of the Jungle Royal Rumble Asia Series? Now seriously, it would be so much fun. Oh the possible headlines, in all these languages!  😛

2008 PL season review and playoff preview

The Central League still has a few rain out games to remake that will determine first place, and the huge one game advantage and home field advantage (all games at home), so I’ll leave the CL until next week.

The Pacific League has completed its regular season schedule and the first round of the playoffs (best of 3) begins this Saturday.

So, here’s the season review and Climax Series playoff preview.

1. Saitama Seibu Lions

76-64-4 (.543)

RS-RA: 715-626

The powerful team that ran with the PL lead all season backed into clinching the PL crown while losing 7 straight because 2nd place Orix was also in a losing skid. The team will be without GG Sato (105GP 432PA 30 2B 21HR 302/368/546) in the playoffs. GG was invaluable in the first half of the season until his Olympic blunder (though, he was playing out of position) and subsequent injury. Luckily for the Lions, they have a capable replacement in Taketoshi Goto who blossomed in GG’s absence with 49GP 184PA 14 2B 12HR 301/370/602. The big time slugging team just fell shy of 200 homeruns with 198 (in a 144 game season!), significant contributions coming from Takeya Nakamura’s breakout 46 homers, Hiram Bocachica’s 20HR in just 78 games, shortstop Hiroyuki Nakajima who had an MVP season with 124GP 556PA 32 2B 21HR 331/410/527, and Craig Brazell’s 27 homers (though with a blackhole 294 OBP). The team struggled in September with a 9-15 record, but has a couple of weeks to prepare for their playoff appearance on October 17th and hopefully will be back in form by then, and the one game and home field advantages should help. But if the shutdown pitching of Fighters win the first round of the playoffs, the Lions will have a tough task at their hands, as pitching and defense are paramount in the playoffs, and slugging not so much.

2. Orix Buffaloes

75-68-1 (.524)

RS-RA: 637-605

The surprise team of the season, as most people had written them off far out of the playoff picture in their preseason predictions. American manager Terry Collins resigned in May with a 21-28 record, since then interim manager Daijiro Oishi directed the team to a great 54-40-1 (.574) record. The team definitely has more momentum than the Lions at the moment finishing off the season by sweeping the Lions in a 2 game series and capping it off with a win against the lowly Hawks. The Buffs rely on the power bats of NPB veterans Alex Cabrera (37yo 36HR 315/394/593) and Tuffy Rhodes (40yo 40HR 277/394/583). Word in the clubhouse is that Oishi had much better relationships with the sluggers than Collins, and they performed much better with the new manager after season opening slumps. Pitching on this team isn’t shabby either with the unheralded four Satoshi Komatsu (172.1IP 2.51ERA 15-3 3holds), Chihiro Kaneko (165IP 3.98ERA 10-9), Shogo Yamamoto (154.2IP 3.38ERA 10-6 2holds) and Kazuki Kondo (149IP 3.44ERA 10-7) anchoring the rotation. The Buffs will be a formidable opponent at home in the first round of the playoffs against the Fighters, as the only difference is in Darvish (though that’s a big difference) but the Fighters have absolutly no power and Rhodes and Cabrera can win the series for them in the non-Darvish games.

3. Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters 

73-69-2 (.514)

RS-RA: 533-541

This low scoring team is built for its cavernous home, the Sapporo Dome, and rightly so as the team’s recent playoff success topped by being the Japan Series and Asia Series champions in 2006. The Fighters are, of course, led by the best pitcher in Japan in Yu Darvish (200.2IP despite going to the Olympics! 10CG 208K 1.88ERA 16-4). But one man can’t win a best of 3 series, and the rest of their pitching staff is not spectacular with Ryan Glynn (3.64ERA), Brian Sweeney (3.48ERA), Masaru Takeda (2.96ERA), and Shugo Fujii (3.25ERA) for getting to pitch half their games in a pitcher’s paradise. The Fighters hit a league low 82 homers during the season, but time and again over the years they’ve shown that they can win closely fought games, so as long as the team can hold a lead to its shutdown closer Micheal Nakamura (2.14ERA 46.1IP 28SV) the team will be able to win in the playoffs (reliable setup man Takeda Hisashi with ERAs in the 2s the last two seasons has been rather hittable this season with 4.40ERA). The power will be supplied by Kensuke Tanaka (297/379/451 32 2B), Atsunori Inaba (301/380/513 25 2B 20HR), and Terrmel Sledge (289/361/473). Hmm.. looking at this, I think the Fighters can take the first round of the playoffs against the Buffaloes. All they have to do is win one of the non-Darvish games and both teams equally rely on just a few power bats that can mightily swing the series.

4. Chiba Lotte Marines

73-70-1 (.510)

RS-RA: 662-648

Bobby Valentine’s team finished just half a game out of the playoffs in the fierce battle that lasted until the end of the season. The gaping hole in relief left open by the departures of Yabuta (Kansas City), Fujita (Yomiuri), and Kobayashi (Cleveland) were nicely filled in with Yusuke Kawasaki (3.00ERA 29holds), Brian Sikorski (2.23ERA 13holds), and the emergence of Tadahiro Ogino (2.45ERA 30SV) as the team’s closer. The team wasn’t short on power either with Shoitsu Ohmatsu (499SLG), Toshiaki Imae (509SLG), Jose Ortiz (454SLG from 2B), and Tasuku Hashimoto (404OBP and 536SLG as a catcher!). The team just fell short. Better luck next year, Bobby.

5. Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles

65-76-3 (.461)

RS-RA: 627-607

This mystery team posted a positive run differential all season but struggled to put together a winning season and was removed from the playoff race early in the summer. I’m sure losing their closer Fukumori (Texas) didn’t help, but the team needs more help in relief so that it can win close games, even though Tsuyoshi Kawagishi (1.94ERA 55.2IP) and Kanehisa Arime (2.05ERA 44IP) both put up impressive numbers in relief. As long as 40 year old slugger Takeshi Yamasaki’s performance (276/372/471) doesn’t fall off a cliff, the team should be able to expect better things next season. Hisashi Iwakuma had an incredible season (1.87ERA 5CG 201.2IP 21-4, a definite Sawamura (Japanese Cy Young) frontrunner along with Darvish) considering how incompetent his teammates were.

6. Fukuoka Softbank Hawks

64-77-3 (.454)

RS-RA: 556-641

The living legend Sadaharu Oh’s team was in playoff contention until late summer, then had a disastrous Sept-Oct (6-21!) and ended up finishing at the bottom of the standings, even losing the final game for Oh in a “sayonara” walk-off fashion to nearly futile Eagles. 35 year old Nobuhiko Matsunaka’s slip in performance over the last several years (2004-1.179OPS, 2005-1.075, 2006-.981, 2007-.798, 2008-.871) is a concern as he’s not getting any younger. Fellow slugger Hiroki Kokubo is even older at 37, Hitoshi Tamura is always battling injuries, so the only bright hope is the up and coming third baseman Nobuhiro Matsuda (279/322/468), his lack of ability to draw walks is concerning but he’s still 25. On the pitching side, Toshiya Sugiuchi had a great season (2.66ERA 196IP) and Ohtonari had a solid season (3.12ERA 155.2IP) but highly touted rookie Shota Ohba had a disastrous campaign (5.42ERA 78IP 14HR), he’ll have to cut down on the number of homers given up to improve his performance.

Saitama Seibu Lions lower playoff ticket prices!

When the Saitama Seibu Lions clinched 2nd place (and the right to host some of the Climax Series playoff games) earlier in the season they announced several efforts to ramp up their ability to draw larger crowds to the Seibu Dome, which due to its inconvenient location at the border of Saitama and Tokyo isn’t primed for big crowds, especially on weekdays when they’ve drawn only about 14000 people up until the recent potential 1st place clinching games which had drawn 26000-33000 people. The Lions backed into clinching 1st place recently when the 2nd place Orix Buffaloes lost enough games, this means that the Lions are going to host the PL finals (or Climax Series 2nd stage) with a 1 game advantage, and Saitama gets to host the entire series of up to 6 games (Oct 17-19, 21-23).

The two major efforts in their campaign are:

• Host Game 1 at Omiya Stadium. They had already hosted a game there on June 27, the stadium is more centrally located within Saitama and this was in line with Seibu’s efforts to more firmly plant its roots in Saitama. Hosting the first playoff game there was an unexpected surprise and should help the team in this endeavour.
• Lower ticket prices! Ticket prices have been dramatically slashed in an effort to draw strong home team support and to not be an embarrassment. The Lions have also designated much of the third base side (traditionally for the away team supporters) for Lions fans, they better turn up in droves though I’m sure other fans won’t shy away from buying the “Lions cheering section” seats on the third base side. Anyways, here are the prices.
• Regular season: Special S 10,000 yen, Infield S 4000 yen, Infield reserved 3000 yen, Infield unreserved 2500 yen, Outfield unreserved 1800 yen.
• Climax Series: Backstop Special 7500 yen, L Infield reserved 2000 yen, L Infield unreserved 1500 yen, L Outfield unreserved 1000 yen, Visitor outfield unreserved 1500 yen.

So, basically the team halved ticket prices and are trying to fill the stadium with Lions fans. I plan on being there to take in a few games. Despite these efforts though, tickets are still available for all 6 games.

2008 Koshien Round of 16 and Olympic Baseball

Round of 16 for the 90th Summer Koshien tournament began today.

Oh, and Olympic baseball also begins today with Darvish going up against the powerful Cuban lineup, that’s a definite can’t miss event. Darvish didn’t look good in his pre-Olympic warmup when he gave up 2 runs over 3 innings against a PL selects team. Team Japan was handed the 6-4 win to them in that game because the PL team threw in an inexperienced pitcher in there to get mauled. The following day Japan’s other ace Kenshin Kawakami absolutely collapsed following second baseman Nishioka’s error and gave up 7 runs without recording an out, Masahiro “Ma-kun” Tanaka then proceeded to give up 2 more runs before mercifully bringing the inning to an end in what ended up to be a 2-11 loss against the CL selects team.

Then again, I’m not worried about Darvish since he always cranks it up a notch or two for big games, but the Japanese team itself is a source of worry as many players entered midseason funks immediately before the Olympics, and many pitchers haven’t been pitching particularly well this season. Then again, conditions in Beijing on an outdoor grass field facing international competition will be very different from the warmup games against fellow Japanese players in the friendly confines of Tokyo Dome, so Team Japan itself could be kind of an enigma.

Anyways, at Koshien, 21st century power Seiko-Gakuin (Fukushima) just won the first game of this round 5-2 over Gifu-Sho (Gifu) in the battle of middle powers.

Game 2 today features Kurashiki-Sho (Okayama), Team Japan Senichi Hoshino’s alma mater and an old baseball school, against recent powers Tokoha-Kikugawa (Shizuoka). I didn’t remember Shizuoka schools getting this far in Koshien, but this school won last year’s Spring Invitational (Senbatsu) Koshien tournament through an almost no-bunting offense. I’m liking the sounds of this, go Tokoha! (UPDATE: Tokoha came back from 6 runs down by scoring 7 runs in the 5th, and is currently leading 11-7 in the 9th. Oh, and here’s Tokoha looking very Yankees. Kurashiki made things close scoring 2 runs in the top of the 9th, but the game ended 11-9 with a win for Tokoha.)

Game 3 pits Komadai-Iwamizawa (North Hokkaido) vs long time powerhouse baseball school Chiben-Wakayama (Wakayama). I’ll be pulling for the boys from up north to pull off an upset here.

And the final game today is Hotoku-Gakuen (East Hyogo) who battled their way through tough Hyogo prefecture to get here, against Kagoshima-Jitsugyo (Kagoshima) who seem to be always representing their prefecture. Again, it’ll be good to see a new face reach the quarterfinals.

Game 1 on Day 13 tomorrow features Kanto-Daiichi (East Tokyo) vs Urasoe-Sho (Okinawa). Despite the fact that I saw Kanto-Daiichi play in their qualifiers, I’ll cheering the team from the far south. Both teams feature solid pitching and hitting, so this should be a good match.

Game 2 is an interesting matchup that pits recent powers from a small prefecture Aomori-Yamada (Aomori) against an old power in Keio (North Kanagawa) who have returned to the Summer Koshien for the first time in 46 years out of difficult Kanagawa.

Game 3 features two big hitting teams as Toho (West Aichi) score 15 runs in their first game, and Osaka-Toin (Osaka) scored 16 runs in their opening game. Kanazawa almost knocked Toin off its perch in the round of 32 through wily use of multiple pitchers with differing pitching forms, but Toin narrowly pulled off a 6-5 win in extra innings.

And the final game in the round of 16 is tournament favourites Yokohama (South Kanagawa), who had a very tough draw having to defeat powerhouses Urawa-Gakuin (South Saitama) and Koryo (Hiroshima) to get here, against northern powerhouse Sendai-Ikuei (Miyagi) in an intriguing matchup.

Hiram Bocachica Interview at Marinerds

Deanna at the Marinerds blog has a neat interview with Hiram Bocachica of the Pacific League leading Saitama Seibu Lions. As she writes, the Lions don’t get much coverage in the English media (or even the Japanese media for that matter), so this is nice to see. And Bocachica is quietly having a solid season (.240/.330/.550, 15HR 32RBI in 57 games) hidden in the shadows of Olympic bound G.G. Sato (.946 OPS) and Hiroyuki Nakajima (.985 OPS), as well as Takeya Nakamura (27HR) and Craig Brazell (25HR) chasing the homerun title.

Here’s a couple of tidbits that I found interesting.

How does it feel to come to a championship team like this?

Well, I did a bit of research before I signed, heard a lot about the team. You know, what players came out of this team, guys like [Daisuke] Matsuzaka and [Kazuo] Matsui, and I think that’s one of the reasons I signed with them. I knew it was going to be a pretty good team and was going to compete, so that helped to make my decision a lot easier.

I didn’t know how much foreign players looked into new teams overseas before signing with them, so this was interesting.

I was going to ask about the fans, actually. Do you think it’s good or bad with all the cheering?

It’s pretty good! They don’t care about what the score is, they always cheer, they never boo you. They don’t look at the bad stuff, they only think of the good stuff, and I think that’s something the American fans could learn from the fans here in Japan.

…

You’ve been doing great. You’re really popular.

I’m doing all right. The fans are great, and like I told you, they only look at the things that you do positive, and that helps a LOT.

For some players, fan reactions do matter (take notes, fans in New York and Philly  😛 ). So the constant cheering in Japan is good for someone like Bocachica.

I’m sure in both cases above, they depend on the player, but I found these things interesting coming straight from a player’s mouth.

Oops and Ichiro’s 3000th

I had planned on doing a Pythagorean review of the season so far along with the Power Rankings for NPB during its current 4 day All Star break, but urgent work and real life has gotten in the way. The first week of August promises to be a hectic week for Japanese baseball as the Koshien high school baseball tournament kicks off (March Madness of high school baseball, basically) on 2 Aug, the second half (or rather the latter third) of the NPB season resumes play on 3 Aug, and the Olympic team being assembled for workouts on 2 Aug with warmup games starting on 5 Aug against the Giants farm team, then against PL selects and CL selects on 8-9 Aug. The chances of me being able to keep up with this mayhem is rather slim from the current outlook, which is unfortunate.

Meanwhile, Robert Whiting and other baseball figures weigh in on Ichiro’s 3001 career hits, a combined figure between his NPB (1278 in 9, not completely whole, seasons) and MLB (1723 and counting in his 8th season) hit totals. If NPB players NPB stats are to be counted towards Cooperstown, then they should not qualify for rookie of the year honours. It’s as simple as that, you can’t have your cake and eat it too (stupid saying, but y’know). But then again, there may be a gray zone when it comes to considering NPB stats for Japanese MLB players considerations for the Hall, perhaps a weighing the NPB numbers would be a more reasonable middle ground instead of either extreme. Either way, if Ichiro hits 3000 in the majors, and his career totals approach 5000, then he should be a lock for the Hall, like Whiting mentions.

2008.7.31 NPB Defensive Team Stats

NPB is heading into a 4 day All Star break, and with my lack on interest in All Star games in general (this year’s MLB edition not withstanding), let’s look at team pitching and defense numbers for NPB clubs at this 2/3 point in the season. The All Star games are late this season, immediately precedes the start of the training camp for the Japanese Olympic team, so maybe this was planned specially for this year’s schedule.

Here’s the Central League numbers (mainly focusing on DER and FIP):

Hanshin Tigers defensive numbers are about league average in terms of DER, but they have excellent pitching leading the league in both FIP and ERA, a well deserved 1st place in the CL. Now 2nd place Giants have come on strong lately behind their continued solid pitching (and their defense seems to have improved with the gap between FIP and ERA closing and DER improving, even if they’re still last in the league). The Dragons tailspin doesn’t seem to be caused by their pitching or defense which is about the same as the last time we looked at these stats last month, but the rising ERA indicates they’ve been unluckier over the last month.

And now the Pacific League numbers:

Nippon Ham Fighters continue to punch above their weight with excellent pitching and defense with their DER at an astounding .716, far beyond any other team in NPB. The Seibu Lions have about league average pitching and defense, so you know that their 1st place standings is attributed to their slugging and running games. The Eagles are an enigma, as they have decent pitching and defense (best FIP, average ERA and DER) and can pound the ball, but is last place in the league.

My mind’t not fully functional at the moment, so this is it for today.

2008.6.16 NPB Update

Yeah, I know this is a couple of days late, but these numbers are only missing the Eagles-Giants game yesterday.

Let’s look at the Central League first:

Hanshin remain strong, both in the real life standings and in Pythagorean win expectations based on runs scored and runs against. But I’m starting to think that maybe the Tigers record is inflated due to the unusually weak CL this year. With interleague play almost finished CL teams have gone 53-67 against their PL counterparts so far, but then again maybe this is mostly the fault of the pathetic Yokohama BayStars who are 3-17 in interleague and sport a 16-44-1 (.267) record overall. The utter incompetence of the BayStars are probably helping other CL teams look more respectable, and tipping the balance in favour of the PL. With the slumping and injured Giants, the race for 3rd and last playoff spot in the CL is a three horse race between Yomiuri, Carp, and Swallows. (The Swallows getting it done on defence is a bit of a surprise as that’s not typically talked about.) The Dragons are doing about as well as expected, no better no less, but they are much stronger now with Kawakami back in full force.

 

Now onto the Pacific League: 

The Lions continue their dominance, but the reliance on the long ball didn’t work against the Tigers as the king of the jungle lost 3 out of 4, getting outplayed by a much better balanced Les Tigres team full of on base monsters (Arai, Akahoshi, and Kanemoto lead the CL, with all three OBPing over .400 and Toritani is no slouch either at .370) and killer relievers in JFK+Watanabe which makes their games 5-6 inning games. So, the Lions fortunes come October may not be so bright as they play Yankee style big ball susceptible to opposition pitching in the playoffs which usually only consist of aces.

I’m beginning to think that the ultra-low scoring Fighters getting it done almost entirely on pitching, defence, and the cavernous Sapporo Dome last year was not a fluke, as they continue to outperform their Pythag expectations (with the staggering .718 Defensive Efficiency, far and away the best in the PL and NPB), winning one close game after another (they’re like the winning version of the Padres in this regard). 

The Eagles are for real, they’re getting it done both with hitting, pitching, and defence (they, in fact, have the highest Pythag win% in NPB!), I expect them to pull ahead of the Hawks to secure themselves a playoff position and battle the Fighters for 2nd place.