Rakuten's Tao Not to Return

It's not Tao's fault. Look at the team he had. To make matters worse, Iwakuma and all the foreign players struggled. On the bright side, they have a future with Iwakuma and Ichiba at the top of the rotation.

Yeah, it's obviously not Tao's fault with that talent level. Mikitani sure has weird ways of operating teams (including his football/soccer team).

Eagles pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma said about Tao's firing, "I don't know what to think about firing a manager after one year, someone who came in not knowing the strengths of his teams. It was too quick." [Daily Yomiuri Article]

Also, now there are reports that former Chiba Lotte GM Tasturo Hirooka could be the new GM. It just seems Mikitani isn't making much of a effort to make a winning team. Hirooka is best know for the GM who had disagreements with current Chiba Lotte manager Bobby Valentine which led to Valentine's firing, along with his some of his coaches such as Lenn Sakata (ni-gun manager) and Thomas Robson (hitting coach at ichi-gun) being demoted.

It just looks like Mikitani is dropping the ball if he hires Hirooka as GM. It would be a slap in the face to Eagles' fans. I think Mikitani should rename Kuehnert GM.

[Bobby Fired Thread]

I was wondering why it wasn't mentioned that, at the same time Rakuten announced that Tao-kantoku would not be returning, nobody mentioned that Rakuten announced that Nomura Katsuya (former Nankai, Yakult, and Hanshin manager - currently GM of the Industrial League Shidax) will be the new manager. Was Nikkan Sports the only one to print that?

The official Rakuten party line is that all options are open, though it seems that Nomura is the guy they are most intent on.

I'm not sure what Mikitani is thinking, though. He obviously isn't allowing the baseball people to do all the thinking for him. In fact, he is looking more and more like Japan's equivalent of Dallas owner Jerry Jones.

There was no reason to replace Marty Keuhnert (though one indeed has to fault him for bringing in failed retreads Kevin Hodges and Gary Rath, for example), either. Really, if Mikitani had any ideas of attempting to change the landscape of Japanese pro baseball, he certainly betrayed that by acting like any other incompetent panicky owner.

That he would even consider a washed up hack like Nomura, whose stint at Hanshin was an unqualified debacle, and I would say about half of it was directly his fault, is just more of the sad same old song and dance that has been played over the years in NPB.

Mikitani would be far better off bringing in somebody like Lenn Sakata, Hara, or Wakamatsu rather than a relic of a bygone era such as Nomura. Too bad it probably won't happen.

- There was no reason to replace Marty Keuhnert [...]

I agree, the Eagles panicked too quick on Kuehnert. It was unfair for them to dimiss him a month or so into the season. I felt Kuehnert would have definetly changed the Eagles for the better, and even maybe led to reform in the NPB some.

- Rakuten announced that Nomura Katsuya (former Nankai, Yakult, and Hanshin manager - currently GM of the Industrial League Shidax) will be the new manager.

I'm interested to see what Nomura would do as a manager for the Eagles. Nomura does have a great track record as manager, and again I'm interested to see what he will do in that position.

- I'm not sure what Mikitani is thinking, though. He obviously isn't allowing the baseball people to do all the thinking for him.

I don't have no clue whatsoever if Mikitani is letting his baseball people do the thinking for him. That's another reason why the Kuehnert firing was a major mistake in my opinion. Hopefully, Mikitani uses some of Rakuten's earnings gained to sign some free agents or some key foreign players.

I mis-read your posting. I thought you said that Nomura does not have a great record as a manager, so I wrote this novel of a reply. I realise now that you in fact wrote

- Nomura does have a great track record as manager[...]

and I agree, of course, but after writing this epic (and now redundant) reply, I couldn't bring myself to delete it, so here goes.

He did OK with the Swallows. While Hanshin struggled during Nomura's reign, they also struggled beforehand, too. Given that, at the time, Hanshin's purse strings were pulled too tight to buy any decent outside help, I speculate that any manager would have had a hard time getting Hanshin out of the cellar.

Also, Nomura left Hanshin with a good legacy: Akahoshi, Fujimoto, Shuta, and many of those less obvious signings were all Nomura acquisitions.

To me, Nomura's biggest failure at Hanshin (and, by contrast, Hoshino's biggest success) was that he failed (and Hoshino succeeded) to convince the club to spend money on talent. Because Hoshino did so, he had a luxury that Nomura could never afford: he sacked almost all the club's deadwood players, and bought and scouted people with real potential that came with a higher price tag.

I think I'm getting away from the point here. What I want to say is: I agree that Nomura at the Eagles' helm is a really interesting proposition. Mikitani is not afraid to invest, so Nomura might just have some success with them.

Nomura announced that he agreed to become manager of the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, Thursday. [Full Story - Mainichi Daily News]

Nomura was signed to a 150 million yen/year contract with a 100 million yen signing bonus. [Full Story - Japan Ball]

Just another name to add to the list of people disappointed with the axing of Tao. Him and Marty were given an enormous task and a tight time frame, and despite doing what I see as a great job, have simply been undone by Mikitani's silliness and odd "management" - even Horiuchi got two years before he got the flick. With luck some of their good work will bear fruits even after they've gone.

This does seem like a major missed opportunity for change in the NPB - it's very much back to the future with Nomura-kantoku.

It might interest you all to know that the gentleman who replaced Marty Kuehnert as the acting Rakuten GM is an old school Keio grad named Isaso Hirono who played with Chunichi, Nishitetsu, and Yomiuri in a lengthy career. He then went on to coach with Chunichi, Lotte, and Seibu, and was known for his fondness for Tatsuro Hirooka's "kanri yakyu" or "controlled baseball," with its emphasis on sacrifice bunts, constant practice, and daily post-game "hansei-kai" or "self-relfection conferences."

While with Lotte, Hirono was let go when Bobby Valentine arrived. The rap against him, among other things, was he lacked "baseball connections" in the US and tended to recruit gaijin imports based on watching videos. It's interesting to note that the same criticism - lack of connections - was used in press reports to describe Kuehnert's transfer. Does anyone detect a little politicking going on?

BTW, there is also a lot of talk in NPB cricles these days that Hirooka, presumably recovered from his health problems, will return to baseball with the Golden Eagles in some front office capacity. The headlong return to the past continues.

However, that said, Rakuten, by some accounts, will succeed this year in its quest to become the first PL team to turn a profit, despite its dismal win-loss record. They did it through control of concessions (which normally belong to the stadium in Japan) and the judicous use of corporate sponsorships, among others, which are tried and true MLB marketing technqiues.

Hirono officially submitted his resignation about 5 days ago, citing how difficult and un-baseball like everything was run in Sendai.

One must remember that this is a business Mikitani is running, not a "team" to compete on the field. Hence, the profit turned on a team that would place tenth in the Mexican league.

Mikitani didn't receive an MBA from Harvard for nothing my friends. And Kuehnert, really this guy spent 30 years trying to get into the NPB to "exert his way, and his ideas" only for Mikitani to see exactly how much he didn't know. The entire organization saw through him in 30 days and retired that act.

- One must remember that this is a business Mikitani is running, not a "team" to compete on the field.

Please, this is how many times now that I've heard this? Rakuten was an expansion team, if you expected them to compete in their first year you couldn't be anymore wrong.

It wasn't Mikitani's fault this team didn't compete this year, the circumstances they were stacked up against made it hard for them to win, such as being at the bottom of the totem pole. It wasn't Tao's fault they didn't compete, it wasn't the coaching staff, nor wasn't anyone else's either in the front office.

Tao and the coaching staff did all they could with what they were given. The Orix Buffaloes protected there players like any other team would have done in the situation. The players the Eagles selected were all they had to choose from, and this was the main reason why the Eagles were so challenged. Iwakuma struggled, and Ichiba flopped in his first year, both of whom were expected to be key players for Rakuten.