Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Japan baseball chiefs admit lying over ball change
(www.bangkokpost.com)
Kunio Shimoda…I hear the Trost - Levine regime is hiring.
Read More...After months of denial and an inexplicably huge surge in home runs, Japan’s baseball chiefs have admitted they secretly switched the design of the ball to make the game more exciting.
Players and fans had repeatedly quizzed Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) bosses after seeing a 40 percent rise in the number of balls that were slugged out of the park so far this season.
In April NPB said the specifications of their ball—each of which ...
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1. Willie Mayspedes posted on December 17, 2012 at 08:27 PM # hit 0 | hit 0I was really hoping I would click through to find "...Sakai"
Of course, it seems evident that there are humongous error bars on NPB translations, and different players react very differently to the league switch. And now the Japanese dead ball era adds further complications. But Nakajima is an elite hitter in NPB to a degree that is not obvious from his raw stats.
Make the Colliseum a destination stop just for the concessions? I'd give it a shot.
I was really hoping I would click through to find "...Sakai"
I had the same thought. I figure $3.25M/yr for postgame spreads by the Delacroix could only be good for team morale.
For a white guy maybe. How can an Asian have the necessary fire and gumption to play Gibson-ball?
Japanese gold glove infielder and batting champion Tsuyoshi Nishioka is why not.
The sample of NPB->MLB movement is still small, and there's huge variance in MLB performance among former NPB players. The fact that Nishioka failed is no more determinative than the fact that Iguchi succeeded.
It comes down more to the evaluation of the individual rather than of the population. I'd start with the overall translations (which are quite good for Nakajima), but those are only a very broad, initial indicator.
In fairness, I was kinda whining. They probably scouted him and determined that his defense wasn't good enough for MLB Shortstop. Then again they also scouted Gregorious and KT came away comparing him to Jeter. So Who TF knows.
I see lots of downside in the form of horrible play and losses. I always say, I'd play for free, but that doesn't mean there's no downside to playing me.
Nakajima is no sure thing, but he has a better offensive track record than Nishioka. Nishioka's batting title was pretty flukish while Nakajima has solid secondary skills. We'll see. I think Sogard isn't a bad fallback option if he flops, actually. I know my fellow A's fans don't rate him, but I think that's because he looks like the graduate assistant to a classics professor in a small New England liberal arts college.
Nishioka was terrible, I'm not disagreeing with that, but he's also not the only Japanese infielder to come to MLB. Nakajima may prove to be as terrible as Nishioka but I'll judge that when I see him play. Worse case scenario is the A's flush 6 million of the Yankees' money down the toilet. That's ashtray money for an MLB team, even for the A's.
I think there are a couple of at bats against Darvish in there.
I think it's clear that you're suffering from some post-Nishioka stress disorder. I recommend beer.
Catcher you say?! Alex Anthopolous has catchers!
Oh.
Nakajima could bust, and the error bars on NPB translations are well known. That doesn't mean that Nishioka is a particularly useful data point.
I guess he might be one of the Mets top 30 prospects or so. Plays 3rd base. Kind of a lottery ticket, I guess.
There's no need to generalize, particularly about hitters, since there have been so few.
Infielders
Iguchi - good
Iwamura - good, then fell off a cliff
K.Matsui - OK but not worth the money
Kawasaki - bad
Nishioka - unbelievably horrible
Outfielders
Matsui - very good
Ichiro! - very good
Aoki - seems good so far
So Taguchi - good, especially considering how old he was
Fukudome - good but not worth the money
Shinjo! - bad
Outfielders seem like a better bet, but I would really not consider pitchers a better bet, considering the flop of Kei Igawa, the flameout of Hideki Irabu, the overpaying of Kenshin Kawakami and Hisashi Iwakuma, the incredible overpaying of Matsuzaka, the unimpressive performances of Ryota Igarashi, Masao Kida, Satoru Komiyama, Tateyama, Yabuta, Keiichi Yabu, etc.
Japanese pitchers seem to be nearly as good a bet as other free agent pitchers. I can name just as many flameouts from MLB free agents. They do seem more overpaid but all pitching seems overpaid.
That seems like an awfully high-level worst case, unless you specifically mean the Brandon Inge of 2012.
He doesn't really seem like a Brandon Inge kind of player to me. Inge is a great fielder with HR power who cannot get on base. Nakajima seems like he may struggle with the glove but could be ok, too, won't have much pop, but has good on base skills. I'll be happy with the Japanese Marco Scutaro.
Source. He sounds like an entertaining guy.
Five of the six teams in the Pacific League, including the Seibu Lions, his ex-team, play on turf.
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