Back to the Playoffs for Lotte

After last season's distracting war between Lotte's front office and Valentine-kantoku, the Chiba Lotte Marines have come together and clinched 3rd place on the final day of the season.

Besides the change in manager, there were two major changes with Lotte this past off season.

The first was the acquisition of Korean slugger Tae-gyun Kim. Lotte sold a lot of Kimchi burgers at the stadium as Kim belted out 21 home runs while driving in 92 RBIs. That home run total strikes me as kind of low considering how many of them were crucial to winning games.

The other was a new shortstop taking over for somebody by the same name last year. This kid, Tsuyoshi Nishioka, looked absolutely nothing like his namesake last season. This Nishioka hit at an amazing .346 clip, had a .423 on base percentage, and .482 slugging percentage. What's more, he became the 5th player in Japanese baseball history to surpass 200 hits in a season and broke Ichiro's record of 27 3-hit games (modasho - literally "fierce hitting award") while tying the franchise record of 121 runs scored. I'd really like to know where this guy came from, because the impostor by that name last year only hit .260, .360 OBP, .427 slugging with 118 hits and 70 runs scored. (Was he a plant to see to it that Valentine-kantoku failed last season? Some conspiracy theorists started thinking so when that other Nishioka told the crowd off for their battle with management at the end of last season.)

Still, the expectations from Lotte were much higher in June. By then, the Marines had gone 14 games over .500 and were sitting on top of the world. But an injury to another new face on the team, The New Ogino (Takashi Ogino - outfielder), seemed to mark the demise of the team. Lotte fell, tumbled, and twisted down the Pacific League ranks while Nippon Ham worked their way up for the abyss.

Over the past week, Lotte needed to win pretty much every game to make the playoffs. Nippon Ham took over third place on September 23rd, dropped back down to 4th on the 25, but went right back up on the 26th. As the Fighters won their final game on the 28th, that meant that Lotte would have to win all three of their remaining games to make the playoffs, and that's exactly what they did. The Marines defeated the Eagles on the 28th, then swept the Buffaloes at Chiba Marine Stadium on the 29th and October 1st, the last day of the Pacific League schedule.

So congratulations Lotte, our brothers across The Bay. Now you've got your work cut out for you against the Lions then Hawks, all away from home.

Gambare!