Yufune Getting Torpedoed Early and Often
what your logic comes from.(Just blaming others
from one side, and not considering other aspects
much).
He has a lot of injuries for the
last two years. I respect a lot that he can
even come back an do a decent job(even below average). For a near 10 year pro veterans who enterned pro at a late stage(around 24 25 years),
your judgement didn't seem fair to him.
--pekaryin(Steve Te-Kan Yin)
Hanshin's got a lot of pitching problems beyond Yufune. I think that only Hoshino and Yabu have enough innings to rank in the pitching title races. Ah, Fukuhara (4 and 7) also does. Yabu is the only one of the three with a winning record. But what that (only three ranking in) means is that Hanshin's other starters aren't starting much or are getting knocked out early often.
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(aka westbaystars)
Founder
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Hanshin Tigers lefty Toshiro Yufune has never been one of theCentral League's great pitching stars, going 55-72 lifetime with a career ERA of 3.85 in the nine years previous to this one. His finest season was in 1992, when he posted 11 wins and lost eight with an ERA of 2.82. But this year he is having trouble getting into the fifth inning and his ERA has gone from 2.29 on May 6th, when he shutout the Hiroshima Carp, to 4.92 in the wake of lasting only 2.2 innings July 13th against the Chunichi Dragons.
Indeed, not only has he been almost unable to beat anyone except the Yokohama Bay Stars during that time (he is 2-1 for the season against them) as the Tigers have taken their last seven matches with them, but in his ten most recent starts, he has gotten into the sixth inning only four times (including a one unearned run complete game against the Machine Gun Offense and the aforementioned effort against the Carp) and into the fifth just five times. Furthermore, in three of his last four starts, he hasn't lasted even into the fourth.
In those ten starts, he has pitched a mere 45 innings and surrendered 30 earned runs, an ERA of 6.00, allowing 52 hits (six of them homers) and walking 22 (an average of more than four a game).
The Tigers had a bad June, going 8-13 while so far managing to split their July games thus far. As alluded to earlier, Hanshin has ripped off seven wins in a row against Yokohama after losing eight of their first ten games against them, but are 7-19 against the remainder of their CL competitors. A big reason for that is Yufune's less
than competent performances. When a member of the starting rotation can't even go half the game, then manager Katusya Nomura is forced to burn up his bullpen and the club's weak offense (averaging a poor 3.4 runs a contest) has to always fight from behind, which takes a big toll on club morale.
Keiichi Yabu (6-5 with a 3.02 ERA), 16 year veteran Nobuyuki Hoshino (4-5, 3.28) and Shinobu Fukuhara (4-7 3.26 and has even appeared in relief) have done about as well as one could reasonably expect, but the failure of Yabu and former Dodger Greg Hansell to provide any consistency is costing Hanshin big. Nomura expects to win next year and if Yabu doesn't improve real quick, he could find himself playing elsewhere in 2001.