Japan Fails to Win a Medal at the Olympics

I think that many people are still on vacation, so there isn't much talk going on.

Furthermore, as I pointed out here, many pundits were so hung up on the extra inning rule that they forgot to pay attention to how the game was played. As some rightly pointed out, if the Japanese offense would have just hit the ball, there wouldn't have been any need to worry about the extra inning rule. Still, that only came into play one time for Hoshino Japan.

I would like to make a disclaimer before I go any farther. I haven't watched the Olympics - baseball or anything else. The way the Olympic Committee came down on bloggers (athletes included) in 2000, combined with my sense that the Olympics had lost its way by allowing professionals to compete, turned me off of the event. I haven't voluntarily watched any of the last three Olympiads. The only information I have of the games, therefore, is second hand - from the newspaper or your comments.

Having said that, then, I see a total meltdown of the Dragons. Dare I say, they will drop to fourth place?

G.G. Sato of the Lions looks to be heading to the farm after committing 3 errors in Beijing. How long will it take him to recover from this disaster? I don't know.

At softball practice this morning, the talk was about the Gold winning Japanese women softball team. Our young no-con lefty said that he was itching to get on the mound as he watched the final against the U.S.

"Hoshino Japan" - the whole concept was a joke to begin with. Bring in the retired manager for one more chance to lead his team into glory. He - or they - fell flat on their faces. After they won the gold medal, then it would have been better to maybe refer to the team as "Hoshino Japan." Give an athlete, or manager in this case, more credit than he deserves right out of the blocks, big headlines in the newspaper when he hasn't done a darn thing, and there goes "The old ballgame."

Take the necklaces off, the win or nothing attitude away, stop sticking out their butts for the media to kiss, and strip down to what sports and fair competition is all about, not the personalities bit bull**** before anything else. May the better team win!

Even his apology for the poor performance was lame. Why didn't he just come right out and say, "Oh, poor me"? Japan is obviously still a relatively immature country when it comes to sports on an international level.

Now the Japan ladies softball, that was a beautiful thing to see. Their hearts were in the right place for sure - and the team spirit rose to the surface - hence the results.

Japan was terrible. Korea on the other hand was great. Japan could not hit the ball could they? I never understood Hoshino's tactics by sending many pitchers in one game. And especially why he kept on using Iwase when he was blowing one game after an another. USA, too, was great. A team consisting of AAA and AA players out played the so-called Japanese "dream team."

Now I can focus on more important matters such as Lotte, Hanshin, and Christopher's blog.

I had a major problem with the roster, and I think Hoshino also exhibited a bias towards the Central League teams. The Pacific League can clearly hit the ball better, and the Central League has some great pitchers, it all balances out. However, even on paper the team didn't look good from an offensive standpoint. Time for me to make like I do on my blog, and go through the good, bad, and ugly.

The Good
Starting Pitchers
There were some very good moves here in the pitching aspect. Hoshino-kantoku made some good decisions, especially with the white-hot Toshiya Sugiuchi (1-0, 0.84), and Hideaki Wakui (2-0, 0.66). Yoshihisa Naruse also pitched very well, giving up no runs and only 5 hits while striking out 19 in 12 innings.

Norichika Aoki
What's left to say about him? Aoki can flat-out hit, and he was a great #2 batter in the lineup. The only man who kept pace was Hiroyuki Nakajima, who hit .296 (Aoki hit .294), but Aoki drove in 7 runs and hit a home run, Nakajima knocked in 5 runs with no dingers.

The Bad
Yu Darvish
It seemed that the 160 pitch outing against Lotte has messed with Darvish, as he's been shaky ever since, even in warm-ups. He did not pitch well in the opening loss to Cuba, and he had 2 wild pitches in his final appearance against Team USA in the consolation game.

He should've been the pitcher nobody wanted to face in this tournament. Instead, he ended up showing flashes of the old, wild Darvish from 2006. He had a 5.14 ERA over 7 innings in the tournament.

Hitoki Iwase
I'll let the numbers speak for themselves: 0-3 in 4.2 innings, and a 13.52 ERA. So much for having one of Japan's top closers on the team. Besides, he was overshadowed by both Fujikawa and Masahiro Tanaka, who were spectacular in relief.

The Ugly
Player Management
OK, somebody tell me what's wrong with this picture: Masahiko Morino batting cleanup? GG Sato batting 8th and 9th, both on a routine basis? Let's compare the numbers: Morino is batting .313 with 11 HR and 31 RBI this season, while GG Sato is batting .309 with 21 HR and 62 RBI. What was Hoshino-kantoku thinking?!

Also, having Shinnosuke Abe batting 5th, that was also puzzling. He's only batting .263 on the season (he batted only .125 for the tournament), and even with Akihiro Yano and Tomoya Satozaki not batting much better, I constantly wondered, "where is Motonobu Tanishige?" Sure Tanishige has been hurt, but he's the best defensive catcher you could hope to have on the team, and he has international experience, so where was he?

Looking at the lineups each day, I constantly wondered why people were batting where they were. I went over GG Sato, but there was also a distinct lack of power hitters, save for Sato and Shuichi Murata. Hoshino-kantoku slipped up by not including at least one more power hitter like Ogasawara or Matsunaka.

Team mismanagement was easily the #1 factor as to why Japan lost, but there were also a myriad of other factors, like the inability of anyone other than Aoki, Nishioka, and Nakajima to hit over .250. Let's hope the same thing doesn't happen in the World Baseball Classic early next season.

I got the feeling they assumed they would win. Kind of like when you play a video game. You take all the stars and put them on your own team and crush everyone without even giving a thought to losing. Of course the real game is different.

I am also a basketball fan so I have been watching the US basketball team as well. The players on that team made a 3 year commitment and were essentially prepping for the Oympics for 3 years together. I am not comparing the sport or teams, but it just makes me think, how long was the Japan baseball team together?

I really love Japanese baseball, and if only one team or one person I liked could win Gold, I would have wanted it to be them. So I was pretty depressed watching the games. I remember watching the All-Star games the week or so before and that was a lot of fun. Naturally I thought the Olympic team would resemble something like those teams so I was pretty excited. But it was a whole different ball game to me. Nobody seemed to get pumped up or be into the games at all.

I watched every game and they would always show Kawasaki and Darvish standing at the bench railing. They were the only 2 people cheering the team on and they hardly even played!

I was sad when they didn't get 3rd, but now I am actually pretty happy that it's over! Now I can get back watching the league games which are much more fun to watch.

Watching the other Olympic sports was great though. The athletes really gave it everything and had a lot of emotion. I don't think baseball, as a whole, had a very good showing. It just seemed to lack the "Olympic spirit."

The Hoshino Japan name probably stretches back to when the Prussian army trained the Japanese army. Prussian tradition was to name units after their 'Inhaber' or proprietor who was generally wealthy. Of course the name could change. Japanese baseball has a strong military influence as well and so the naming practices probably orignated there - the previous team was Nagashima Japan.

There are many reasons why they didn't win but I think that the major one is poor selection and failure of the players to perform. This unfortunately plays to Hoshino's weakness - his lack of ruthlessness. He does not get rid of a non performing player but gives him another chance. I would say that the decision to leave Iwakuma was perhaps the most incomprehensible and left field should have been Kanemoto - never mind the games played streak. He would have not made so many errors as Saito.

A split which focused the batting on the Central League and pitching on the Pacific League would have been more productive and picking the people based on their form not their reputation in international competition. The irony about both Iwase and Kawakami is that they had given evidence of their shakiness before the tournament (Iwase in last year's qualifying competition and Kawakami against the Central League).

For catcher I would have thought Yano was better as a starting catcher. He is the best in Japan and a better batter than Tanishige. Shortstop should have been Toritani - defensively he's not the best but he hits with power. Matsunaka should also have been a shoe-in, he hits with runners on. I would have also thought that Nakamura would have been a better choice than Morino. He has the experience and the drive to succeed.

I would also question the choice of Miyamoto as team captain. He didn't really seem to have the fire in him. One of the noticeable things about the WBC team was Ichiro's fire and determination. This was sadly lacking in both Hoshino Japan and Nagashima Japan as well. Darvish didn't really care about the Olympics and it showed in his performance. The softball players put the baseball players to shame showing the kind of commitment that was needed.

Hoshino really doesn't know how to manage, that's the only conclusion I could come up with.

That's a good post, Christopher. You raise a good point about the manager's lack of severity. With a team lacking in proper spirit like those boys, and a manager short on initiative, the only remedy is having a trainer also skilled in the more effective methods of persuasion and punishment. Darvish should have been the first player to receive the "counseling."

On the other hand, the ladies on the softball team were full of love and good vibes, that also worked.

How many of the Korean players are in NPB? While the men who run NPB get a lot of well deserved bashing on this board from us know-it-alls in the States, I do have to give credit where it is due for them allowing their players (both Japanese and foreign) to play for their countries in the Olympics while the regular seasons continue on. If the Majors in the North America did the same thing, we'd still have Olympic baseball to look forward to in 2012. Now, since half the NPB teams make the playoffs these days, I suppose it does not devastate these teams that much to miss their stars for a couple of weeks due to the Olympics. If you're a good team you still should finish above .500 and get to play in October.

Well, the World Baseball Classic is just six months away and I'll be into it.