Odds and Ends
Little snippits that are too light to post by themselves.
If you want to follow the two Indian pitchers and their attempt to make the major leagues you can check out their diary like blog here: http://www.themilliondollararm.com/blog/
They were not too impressed with their tryout yesterday and had difficulty with the mound. They have another tryout tomorrow. If you want to get a laugh at some of the cultural differences they are experiencing check out their blog. I’ve copied one particvular quote that I found humerous:
“Before the game on the field we were treated to festivities with a marching band. the band had at least 100 people in it marching and playing instruments. They also had a squad of women that root for the players and dance in time with the music. Then a man on a huge horse comes into the field and rides around”.
Good luck to them and may both of them show enough skills to at least get a couple teams to sign them to a minor league contract.
Also, a site to check out for news on Japanese off season moves. http://www.npbtracker.com/2008/11/npb-bullet-points-20081107/
The nice thing about the site is that it provides English translations from the sports pages of newpapers that are written in Japanese. There are a lot of sites that report on the English version sports pages. Some of the snippits worth noting:
The Softbank Hawks are one of many teams that have an interest in Nelson Cruz. They tried to get him this summer. The Hawks also have an interest in the Padres Brian Falkenborg.
The bidding for Junichi Tazawa could go as high as $7 million, pretty high for a player who has never thrown a professional pitch. The Indians, Yankees and Diamondbacks have no interest in this Japanese phenom. The Yankees have been burned twice by Japanese pitchers, so perhaps they are a bit gun shy about handing out big contracts.
The Hiroshima Carp have renamed their stadium Mazda Zoom Zoom Stadium. The question now that must be answered is which Japanese stadium name is the worst, the Golden Eagles Kleenex Stadium, where they do need a lot of tissues to wipe away their tears after all the losses, or Mazda Zoom Zoom Stadium.
So check out the sight.
And finally, my prediction that Lee Seung-yeop would break out turned out to be false. For the Japan series he finished 2 for 18 with 12 strikeouts. That is pretty bad. The Korean times has also reported that he has no interest in competing in the WBC, needing that time to work out and improve on two years that have been less than stellar.
Two Japanese pitchers that have declared free agency and have expressed an interest in playing in the States are Koji Uehara and Kenshin Kawakami. Japanesebaseball.com has the folloing stats on Kenshin here http://www.japanesebaseball.com/players/player.jsp?PlayerID=1026 and Koji Uehara here http://www.japanesebaseball.com/players/player.jsp?PlayerID=1071