Comments on: Nippon Pro Baseball’s Central League (日本プロ野球のセ・リーグ)

by: Pellegrini

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 02:02:40 +0000

Hokkaido’s bats are going to need to wake up at some point. They’ve had only six hits (total) in the first two games of the series, and Seguignol has accounted for all of the Fighter’s runs thus far. The rest of the team needs to step up, and I’m pretty sure that they will.

Another problem for Hokkaido is that their pitchers issued seven walks during game two. Five of those walks came in the 4th inning alone! No wonder Chunichi was able to score eight points off of only eight hits.

In their series versus Chiba, Hokkaido won the first game 5 - 2, and then got whupped in the second game 8 - 1. Sound familiar? In game three they came out and had major contributions from a number of players (end result was a 7 - 0 win).

It will be interesting to see if something similar happens in the game on Tuesday.

by: DeOrio

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 01:10:44 +0000

Chunichi evens it up. Hell of a series so far. Chunichi outhit Hokkaido 8-4, but outscored them 8-1.

by: Pellegrini

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 04:33:11 +0000

If not for those two walks Kawakami issued in the first inning, he might have snuck away with a gem. A two-hitter in the Japan Series?! Just goes to show how quickly the tides can turn in baseball.

That game was a true pitching duel.

Darvish had 13 strikeouts!

by: DeOrio

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 14:16:07 +0000

Hokkaido takes game one 3-1 despite being outhit 4-2, kind of an analogy for what they’ve done all season. (Opposite of our dear Swallows, who could hit circles around just about anyone, but couldn’t win a game for anything.) Young Darvish had a solid game.

by: Luke

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 22:29:38 +0000

That book looks like a good read, I’ll try and get hold of a copy.

by: Pellegrini

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 14:52:52 +0000

Luke,

A real interesting read by Robert Whiting is “You Gotta Have Wa“. I highly recommend it.

We glean a little information from Japanese new portals, but DeOrio is right when he says that we learn a lot of stuff from just going to games, drinking, talking to people about baseball, and then doing the best we can to confirm the things that we hear.

As mentioned in the podcast, and as you surely remember, we spend the bulk of our time at Jingu stadium talking and imbibing (even moreso this season because Tokyo sucked). In that sense, 2007 was a good data-gathering year for us.

by: DeOrio

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 14:44:10 +0000

Luke, the site エキサイトベースボール is pretty good. The rest comes from various usual news sources, the historical stuff or filler information from books we’ve read or sotries we’ve been told and been able to confirm.

Robert Whiting has a couple of good books on Japanese baseball out there, in English.

by: Luke

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:04:52 +0000

Thanks for my shout out guys, I was touched! As always great show, it sounds like you have a whole lot of fun recording it.
And Chris, that singing….wow! Sang with a gusto that only Japanese beer can provide! Some of my mates were at a pub last week that served Kirin on tap and couldn’t beilieve the strength of the hangovers they got after drinking 6 pints of it. If I only I could have warned them!
Anyway I’m not asking you to divulge any trade secrets but how do you find out your information? When I was in Japan my only sources of sports news were The Japan Times and NHK news, which I’m sure you’ll agree are hardly in depth.
Until the next time.

by: Pellegrini

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 06:09:43 +0000

Ken,
Good call. You’re right that MLB teams won’t stall their hiring process until the end of the Japanese baseball season. That’s kind of what I was implying when I mentioned “extenuating circumstances” earlier.

And maybe he learned his lesson from his last job hunting excursion to the states in which he waited until after the Japan Series was over to interview for jobs. Maybe he felt that he needed to get in the mix earlier on this time to have a fair shot at a job in the MLB.

by: DeOrio

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 05:46:23 +0000

What about revenue? Once the Fighters moved up to Hokkaido, they were all but guaranteed big crowds, a publicly-funded stadium, etc. KC has a stadium renovation underway, but the city is smaller and poorer than Sapporo, neither the team nor the manager is a novelty, and the Royals have to compete, at times, with other, more popular competitors for their audience.

Granted, the Royals probably have more money than the Fighters, but Hillman will be at the helm of a team every bit as firmly entrenched at the bottom as the Fighters were, maybe more so, with a much tougher fight to the top.