Japan Update - Iwakuma and Darvish Continue Strong
While Daisuke Matsuzaka was placed on the disabled list because of inflammation of the shoulder, the Red sox blaming the exertion of pitching in the WBC on the injury, Yu Darvish and Hisashi Iwakuma do not seem to be impacted. Yu Darvish is currently third in the Pacific League ERA at 1.80 after three starts. His only loss was against Iwakuma. You can see a pitch count from his last game at http://www.npbtracker.com/2009/04/yu-darvish-pitching-data-continued/#content. It shows that Yu Darvish relies on predominantly a fastball, which he mixes with sliders, forkballs, curves and the enigmatic shutto pitch. The Fighters won the last game he pitched 4-2 and have used a five game winning streak to catapult them into first place.
Iwakuma was dominating in his last outing, pitching a complete game 4-hit shutout against the Orix Buffaloes, who have a roster filled with sluggers. To give you an example of how dominating the Buffaloes hitters can be to pitchers, they beat the Eagles the next day 15-0, blasting four homeruns, two by Tuffy Rhodes. Iwakuma is fourth in ERA at 1.89. In the Buffaloe game he coaxed 19 groundball outs, including 11 in a row and struck out four. So 23 of the 27 outs were from balls that never got the opportunity to get into the air. That’s a good formulae for shutting out a team that relies on the homerun ball for their offense.
The big surprise is WBC participant Masahiro Tanaka, who is Iwakuma’s teammate on the Golden Eagles. He leads the Pacific League in ERA at 0.50, pitching a shutout in one of his two starts and striking out 19 hitters in 18 innings. A couple years ago he was the rookie of the year in the NPB. He has only pitched two games.
The Nippon Ham Fighters are on top in the Pacific League by a game after the Rakuten Golden Eagles lost to Orix 15-0 on Sunday.
Not to ignore the Central League, but the Hanshin Tigers Tomoaki Kanemoto is not showing his age. The 41 year old leads the NPB in homeruns with 8, thanks to two 3-homerun games in a span of three days. He also is hitting .509 and has driven in 26 runs. The closest player in the RBI race to him is the Chunichi Dragons Masahiko Marino at 15. In the Pacific League two players have 16. You know what American sportswriters would be writing about if they witnessed this kind of production from an American ballplayer that was at the ripe old age of 41.
The Giants are on top in the Central at 8-3 with two ties, just ahead of the surprising Yakult Swallows who are at 8-5. Despite the hitting of Kanemoto, the Hanshin Tigers are still battling to stay above the .500 mark at 6-6 with one tie.
Seung-Yeop Lee skipped the WBC so he could focus on regaining his starting spot with the Yomiuri Giants. So far the results are mixed. While he has hit 4 homeruns, which is second on the team, he is only batting .229. Those four homeruns have resulted in seven RBIs. His counterpart at first base, Michihiro Ogasawara has hit five homeruns and is hitting a more consistent .298. Since they do not have the DH in the Central League, Ogasawara has been playing third base to get Lee’s bat in the lineup.