Dark Days For Seibu

The baseball season is only a month old, but already the future looks dark for the Seibu Lions. As of May 2nd, the team ranked fifth in the six team Pacific League.

Unfortunately...that's the good news.
The bad news comes wrapped in two rather depressing packages.

On the surface, the first of the two packages looks positive. For inside are foreign imports Alex Cabrera and Scott McClain, who in this season's first 32 games combined for an amazing 29 home runs, by far the most by any two teammates in Japan. In recent years, Seibu has had many more misses than hits with foreign recruits so to have both new players produce at such heights has been dizzying.

Powered by Cabrera and McClain, the Lions have the second highest home run output in Japan, behind only Daiei, and now have a pair of threats that opposing pitchers must tip-toe around in the late innings of close games.

The reason the package is so depressing is that, other than the two gaijin sluggers and Kazuo Matsui, the box sits conspicuously empty. Lions' batsmen are faring even worse than in the 2000 season, which was worse than 1999, which was awful. The trend is both obvious and ominous.

Cabrera and McClain have combined for almost two-thirds of the teams homers. Remove them and the .300-plus hitting Matsui from Seibu stats and both power production and team batting average plummet -- to levels by far the lowest in Japanese baseball.

The Lions have almost no offensive infrastructure. Outside of Matsui, there appear to be no home-grown players -- either on the parent club or down on the farm -- with the batting skills to change the situation any time soon.

Lions' offensive anemia has then been further exacerbated by manager Osamu Higashio's daily line-up changes, as he hunts for some magic combo to break the team's batting slump. Yet the truth is that there is no simple solution and the constant changing has only served to highlight the inconsistency.

Through games of May 2nd, only 2 players, Cabrera and Matsui, had played in every Lions game. Only one player, Matsui, had started every game in the same position (shortstop) and only one other player (Cabrera) had batted every game in the same spot in the line-up (fourth).

So -- while the bench is being used with abandoned -- results have been discouraging, with no solution in sight.

Yet, the second package is even more depressing.

For years, pitching has been Seibu's pride. Even this year, the Lions' staff is perhaps the finest in Japanese baseball. On top of several quality starting pitchers, Seibu also boasts Shinji Mori, who, when healthy, has been the best Japanese closer in the post-Sasaki era.

Middle relief, however, has been damning. The arms are aging, ineffective and can no longer keep the Lions in close games.

Higashio continues to reach for familiar names like Takehiro Hashimoto, Denney Tomori and Tetsuya Shiozaki, an overall group that opposing players have hit with too much regularity not only this year, but late last season as well. The team has drafted several young pitchers over the last few seasons to add needed depth to the bullpen, but so far no one has stepped up.

Leaving unsteady what was heretofore the most secure part of Seibu's game.

So the outcome of the 2001 baseball season seems clear already.

For unless two or three more players can come alive at the plate and middle relief can regain its previous level of competence, Seibu will finish out of the Japan Series for the third year in a row.

And that will mean Higashio's job.

Which, when all is said and done, may be the true good news.