Aoki Out of Lineup?

Hmmm. These kinds of questions are starting to increase - i.e. "I haven't seen __________ in the lineup lately. Is he hurt?"

The first place to check is the player's page in question. In this case, Norichika Aoki's player page can be found directly from the "Players" tab above or by clicking on the "Teams" tag and selecting the "Roster" for the "Tokyo Yakult Swallows."

Once at Aoki's player page, you will see his status as:

Current Status:
Tokyo Yakult Swallows - ni-gun

History:
May 05, 2008 - Pain in right side
Mar 26 - Opening day roster

This says that he's with the farm team, with the latest note being the reason for his transfer, pain in his right side.

I know that some of these roster movement notes are vague and/or cryptic. But that's all the information that I've got to go on from the newspaper for many of them. There are occasionally follow ups about doctor results in the newspaper, but those rarely add anything further (other than change a "pain in leg" to "fracture on leg" or such).

Am I always up to date? No. I often fall behind on weekends. And player movement between ichi-gun (top team) and ni-gun (farm team) are published the following day in the dead-tree version of the newspaper, which is where I get it from. So I'll always be a minimum of one day behind.

Still, the information provided on the player pages here is better than what you'll find in Japanese on any site. (Although I will admit that I could probably create a better, centralized transactions and/or injury page to list them all. And it's looking like such a page is sorely needed.)

Thank you.