Info on Players

Tanaka's a little over-hyped because of his Koshien hero status, but he's pretty good all things considered - here he is, an 18-year-old who barely just graduated from high school, and he's 5th in the Pacific League in strikeouts. He has a lovely slider and a lot of poise for such a young kid.

Darvish is awesome, awesome, awesome, but as a longtime Fighters fan I am definitely biased. The team got off to a slow start this year and I can't imagine I was the only one out there basically looking forward to a Darvish start every 6 days. The Hawks' Toshiya Sugiuchi is more likely to win another PL Sawamura award this year if he continues pitching the way he has been, but Darvish will probably be hot on his heels (and will probably at least prevent him from getting the pitching triple crown in strikeouts, with Shunsuke Watanabe perhaps nipping at the ERA category. (Man, I can't begin to say how awesome it is seeing Watanabe being like his 2005 self again. I love submariners.)

Uehara is pretty good, though if you search through the forums you'll see a lot of us debating whether his best days are actually behind him. To be fair, if you want to see the best pitcher on the Giants right now that'd far and away be lefty Hisanori Takahashi. He's been unreal this year as a starter, after being a pretty good closer for half of last year.

Ryohei Hashimoto, as far as I can tell, has been on the Hanshin farm team, but is batting .095 and not playing very much. (Which makes me sad, since he's about the only thing I remember about watching Chiben's team in Koshien last year, that 3-run home run of his.) Ryosuke Hirata is currently hitting .311 on Chunichi's farm team, and Hayato Sakamoto is hitting .284 on Yomiuri's farm team. Both seem to be getting plenty of playing time, but all I have to go on is the farm team stats.

There's only one farm team per top team, so "work your way up through the system" doesn't really mean the same thing, though, and sometimes players don't really get to play enough to develop. Bobby Valentine rants about this all the time.

Atori Ohta's been described as "pro ready" since he was a junior in high school, by some people. I can't imagine he won't get drafted, if he wants to be.

- There have been numerous sites with information on Yu Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka, and Koji Uehara. Are these some of the best pitchers in Japan, or are these just opinionated sites?

I'm not sure about what sites you're talking? Could you possibly be more specific as what sites you visited? Are you possibly talking about the Yu Darvish Watch blog, the Uehara Watch blog, or Japan Baseball Daily?

The first two sites, from my opinion, are looking at Darvish and Uehara from a possible move to the Majors. Japan Baseball Daily is an excellent site put together by Garland-san and is a necessity for English language Japanese baseball news. I'm just afraid I don't know what site, for instance, you're talking about?

As for your question about being the best pitchers in Japan, Darvish is the best starter currently in NPB in my opinion. Tanaka is another young phenom starter for the Rakuten Eagles who's future looks very bright. Injuries have plagued Uehara for a while, but he's looking very good as a closer right now.

- Why is Yuki Saitoh not playing pro ball?

Saitoh decided to go to college, to focus on his studies. He currently pitches for Waseda University, and was named recently to the Tokyo Big Six League's Best Nine squad.

- Also, do rookies such as Ryohei Hashimoto, Hayato Sakamoto, and Ryosuke Hirata get to play, or is the Japanese system set up like American ball where you have to work yourself up through farm teams?

This was discussed somewhat in this thread. Also I suggest reading this article [Daily Yomiuri via Google cache] by Yomiuri Shimbun's Jim Allen which also offers more insight on this matter.

- The article also spoke highly of Atori Ohta, does he have a chance to play pro as well?

Nakata has been highly sought after by both NPB and MLB teams. He currently has 83 home runs in his high school career with Osaka Toin. He most likely will go #1 in the high school portion of the NPB draft.

Yes, those are the sites. My Japanese is horrible and I can only grasp a little, so I rely mostly on English coverage.

I was wondering if you could link player pages with stats to Darvish, Tanaka, Uehara, Hashimoto, Sakamoto, and Hirata if you had time? If you don't have time then it is cool.

Darvish is 6-2 with a 1.92 ERA in 11 games. He's leading the CL in Ks (92) and 4th in wins (6).

Tanaka is 3-2 with a 4.34 ERA in 11 games.

Uehara is 0-1 with 7 SVs and a 3.29 ERA in 13 games. So far this year Yomiuri has used him out of the pen.

Hashimoto has batted .111(3-27) with 0 HRs and 2 RBI in 10 games with Hanshin's ni-gun team.

Sakamoto is batting .275 with 4 HRs and 15 RBI in 37 games and 149 ABs with Yomiuri's ni-gun team.

Hirata is batting .304 (28-92) with 2 HRs and 10 RBI in 30 games with Chunichi's ni-gun team.

Thanks, that helped a lot.

Welcome to the site, I hope your stay is long and enlightening. I'm new to Pro Yakyu myself, but I'll do my best to answer your questions (some of them, anyway). If I'm off by a lot, it's because I don't live in Japan, and I don't know much about what's going on in Pro Yakyu, even though I love it.

Yu Darvish is, without a doubt, one of the best young pitchers in Japan. His stuff is filthy, he's got loads of stamina in the tank, and he's so good, that people are looking to him to be the next Daisuke Matsuzaka, in a sense.

Masahiro Tanaka, or "Ma-Kun" as he's known by his many admirers, is the latest Koshien star to ride his fame to NPB, and he's been successful, for the most part, as a rookie. His Koshien fame will probably carry him to a Rookie of the Year award, and he's going to be the player that Rakuten builds around. He's still got a long ways to go to prove himself as one of the best in the league, though.

I can't say a lot about Koji Uehara because I'm not as well-versed about the Central League as I am about the Pacific League, and for another, I don't like Yomiuri since they're Japan's Yankees, and I hate the Yankees.

I'm not sure why Yuki Saitoh is not playing with the pros. Maybe Hiroshima is bringing Saitoh along slowly, trying not to get him spooked about the pros, despite his 2 successful starts last season (1-0, 0.87 ERA). Who knows what the higher-ups are thinking?

Since NPB is modeled after Major League Baseball, I should think that a pitcher would have to prove himself in the minors to get a promotion. A lot of factors go into whether a player gets a promotion to the next level or not, but what is a huge difference in the NPB system from the MLB system is the way the pitchers are brought about.

From what I've heard from various credible sources, MLB minor-leaguers are only trained to go 6 innings max, while NPB pitchers, from the get-go, are trained to throw at least 120-150 pitches in a start (a good start, that is), and thus, have more stamina.

The only question you have that I can't answer is about Koshien. I know nothing about the players who are coming into Koshien this year, but I can say this: I want to see Koshien, whether it be on the Internet, TV, or maybe I strike the lottery and take a trip to Japan to see it.

I hope I've answered your questions. If there's something I missed, one of our faithful forum-roamers will correct me for some of my points.

Totally different Yuki Saitoh on the Carp. He's not on the top team because he struggled in spring and against ni-gun batters.

The superstar Yuki Saitoh is playing for Waseda University, and he just won them the Tokyo Big Six University title, the MVP award, Best Nine, and won the game to put them in the equivalent of the Japanese College World Series. All this as a freshman.

As to why he's not pro, he said that he'd be pretty ignorant to think that he can just pitch against pros right out of high school. He wants to develop more in college, both as a baseball player and as a human. I don't think money's an issue with his family.

This is a good mentality, but I have to wonder if it's the best situation for him to become the best he can be. From my own experience in sports, playing against the best competition usually improves one's own level. Case in point, the Matsuzaka Generation. A ton of amazing players came out of Matsuzaka's graduating class, and you have to wonder if the competition had anything to do with that.

Unfortunately, I think the up and down careers of Mac Suzuki and Kazuhito Tadano have lead Japanese people to believe that going straight to the majors is a huge gamble.

Saitoh started in the championship game the very next day and went 5 2/3 innings (102 pitches) with 6 Ks, 2 walks, 7 hits given up, and 1 earned run. Waseda won the national title for the first time in 33 years for their 3rd title overall. It'd be easy to say that he carried this team to the title, but this Waseda team was pretty great all around. Keep in mind that Waseda didn't even win it all when they had Tsuyoshi Wada as their ace, Takashi Toritani at short, and Norichika Aoki in the outfield.

So Saitoh is the real deal. Is he going to stay in Japan or do you think he bolts for the minors in the U.S.? I would love to see him stay in Japan.

Most likely he will stay in Japan. This is where his friends and family are and he will be offered a nice contract at the top level.

Actually, that Waseda team with Aoki, Wada, Toritani, Tanaka Hiroyasu and the likes won four straight championships from the spring of 2002, first time ever to win four straight in history. That team also set the school/team record with a perfect 10-0 record in the autumn league of '03.

Source: Wikipedia [in Japanese]

They obviously didn't win the national title. You're probably talking about the Tokyo Big Six title.