This is a site about Pro Yakyu (Japanese Baseball), not about who the next player to go over to MLB is. It's a community of Pro Yakyu fans who have come together to share their knowledge and opinions with the world. It's a place to follow teams and individuals playing baseball in Japan (and Asia), and to learn about Japanese (and Asian) culture through baseball.
It is my sincere hope that once you learn a bit about what we're about here that you will join the community of contributors.
Michael Westbay
(aka westbaystars)
Founder
Next, we have the players who weren't released and are qualified to declare free agency:
YS
CD
HT
HC
YBS
P
IF
OF
P
C
IF
IF
P
P
IF
OF
P
IF
OF
P
C
C
IF
OF
OF
OF
OF
P
P
C
IF
IF
OF
OF
Yasuyuki Kawamoto
Kazuhiro Kiyohara
Hideki Matsui
Shingo Takatsu
Atsuya Furuta
Katsuyuki Dobashi
Chihiro Hamana
Masahiro Yamamoto
Makoto Kitoh
Kazuyoshi Tatsunami
Koichi Sekikawa
Takehiro Hashimoto
Katsumi Hirosawa
Shinjiro Hiyama
Shinji Sasaoka
Shuji Nishiyama
Terunobu Seto
Kenjiro Nomura
Tomonori Maeda
Koichi Ogata
Kojiro Machida
Tomoaki Kanemoto
Takashi Saitoh
Daisuke Miura
Takeshi Nakamura
Hirofumi Ogawa
Hitoshi Taneda
Takahiro Saeki
Takanori Suzuki
OKB
FDH
CLM
NHF
OBW
C
IF
OF
P
P
P
IF
IF
P
P
C
OF
IF
IF
OF
P
IF
IF
Satoshi Nakajima
Ken Suzuki
Tetsuya Kakiuchi
Toyohiko Yoshida
Motoyuki Akahori
Hiroshi Takamura
Akihito Igarashi
Norihiro Nakamura
Shuji Yoshida
Kenichi Wakatabe
Koji Bonishi
Noriyoshi Ohmichi
Kiyoshi Hatsushiba
Tadaharu Sakai
Yukihiko Satoh
Hiroshi Shibakusa
Yukio Tanaka
Koichi Ohshima
Finally, we have the players who qualified for free agency, but were either released or retired (denoted by an *):
CD
YBS
C
IF
IF
IF
C
IF
Susumu Aoyagi*
Takahiro Ikeyama*
Yasuaki Taihoh*
Teruyoshi Kuji
Hidekazu Mitsuyama*
Hiroo Ishii*
OKB
FDH
CLM
OBW
P
C
OF
OF
IF
Hiroshi Ishige
Kenji Furukubo*
Koji Akiyama*
Mitsuchika Hirai*
Yasuo Fujii*
Whew. Next big project is to get data for 2002 entered.