Olympics: Japan needs extra work in baseball gold quest

Japan won a ticket to what could be the final baseball
tournament in the Olympic Games with the Asian Championship victory
in early December, led by strong pitching, solid defense and timely
hitting.

While some baseball observers respect the type of baseball
Senichi Hoshino's players showed in the championship -- hitting for
singles and trying to score one run at a time, instead of swinging
for the fences, others are concerned about a lack of power in the
lineup.

Japan had a total of 40 hits in beating the Philippines, South
Korea and host Taiwan in the Dec. 1-3 final round of the championship
in Taichung.

Seven of those were extra-base hits, with three coming from
cleanup hitter Takahiro Arai and two from Shinnosuke Abe, who batted
fifth and was named the tournament MVP after going 10-for-13 with
four RBIs.

Michihiro Ogasawara, Yoshinobu Takahashi and Hitoshi Tamura, who
could hit in the heart of the lineup, had to pull out of the roster
because of injuries.

The two Yomiuri Giants players were members of the
bronze-winning Athens Olympic team, while Softbank Hawks outfielder
Tamura played a significant role in Japan's World Baseball Classic
victory in March 2006.

Their withdrawals stepped up pressure on pitchers to keep
opponents from scoring, in addition to the tournament's tiebreaker
rules that put an emphasis on the defensive part of the game.

Hideaki Wakui, Yoshihisa Naruse and Yu Darvish were all expected
to put up quality starts, or at least keep the team in the game if
they did not last six innings.

Wakui, the 2007 Pacific League winningest pitcher with 17, threw
a one-hitter over six scoreless innings in a 10-0 win over the
Philippines.

Naruse, who led the PL with a 1.817 ERA and a .941 winning
percentage (16-1), was relieved by Chunichi Dragons ace Kenshin
Kawakami with two outs in the fourth inning against South Korea but
left with a 3-2 lead. Japan went on for a 4-3 win in a four-hour
contest.

PL MVP and Sawamura Award winner Darvish allowed Taiwan to take
a 2-1 lead in the sixth inning on a two-run homer by former Los
Angeles Dodger Chen Chin-feng, but Japan came right back to score six
runs in the seventh on its way to a 10-2 rout of the host.

Darvish became the winning pitcher after working seven solid
innings.

The three young pitchers apparently hold the key to Japan's
success in Beijing.

Hoshino has called them ''the ones who will lead Japanese
baseball in the years to come.'' Wakui and Darvish are 21 years old
and Naruse 22.

Koji Uehara and Shunsuke Watanabe are the top candidates to join
the three starters as the number of games each team plays increases
to a maximum of nine in the Olympics from three in the Asian
Championship.

Uehara was the closer in Taiwan but is likely to be in the
starting rotation in Beijing, in line with a change in his role for
Yomiuri following the club's acquisition of Marc Kroon.

Watanabe was cut when Hoshino reduced the roster to the final 24
players shortly before the Asian Championship final round.

But he was one of the three starters on the WBC team, along with
Uehara and Daisuke Matsuzaka, and is one of the rarest and most
successful submarine pitchers in the world.

Kawakami and Hiroyuki Kobayashi are also starter candidates and
likely will also be used in middle relief.

Hitoki Iwase and Kyuji Fujikawa are expected to handle
late-inning duties, while Japan manager Hoshino will see how Kohei
Hasebe, who was the only amateur player on the Asian Championship
roster, performs in his rookie season with the Rakuten Eagles.

Whether to proceed in bringing the best players to the national
team in August when the regular season heats up in Japan is also an
issue.

Club owners agreed in January 2007 to provide full support for
Hoshino and that there will be no regulations such as two players
from each club for the national team in the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Lotte Marines manager Bobby Valentine, whose team sent six
players to the Olympic qualifying tournament, has said national team
members should be selected equally from each club.

Japan has appeared in the baseball tournaments of all six
previous Olympics, including the 1984 and 1988 Games when the sport
was a demonstration event.

Japan beat the United States in the 1984 final in Los Angeles
and lost to the United States in the 1988 final in Seoul.

Since baseball became an official medal sport in 1992, Japan has
won a silver and two bronzes, with one fourth-place finish.

The International Olympic Committee has decided to drop baseball
and softball from the 2012 London Games.

''I know the next one could be the final Olympic baseball
competition, so I'll try to have people around the world rediscover
the excitement of the game,'' Hoshino said.

''I want to meet the United States in the final because baseball
is a national sport for both nations,'' he said.

Aside from Japan, the United States, Cuba and the Netherlands
have booked their places in the eight-team Olympic tournament.

China automatically qualified as host and will be joined by
three more teams to be decided at the final qualifying competition
next March.

[Full Article: http://www.japanball.com/news.phtml?id=11431]