Well, it’s been a while. Life has kept me hectically busy, but every once in a while I get the urge to express myself creatively by way of printed word again, so I’ve decided to attempt to be...
Update:Â Nippon Ham did indeed draft Otani, and Ben Badler has confirmed that that won’t legally stop him from signing with an MLB team. I had implied that it would, at least until the negoti...
Okay, so the cat is out of the bag about high school pitching prospect Shohei Otani. Here’s everything I know about him. I first found out about Otani about a year ago, when Yakyu Kozoh had ...
Before I get caught up on my more analytical pieces, here’s about a week’s worth of news items: The Yomiuri Giants have broken up the Tokyo Yomiuri Kyojin-gun Ouen-dan (Tokyo Yomiuri Giants C...
By a wide margin, the Japanese-language blog I read the most is Draft Report. If you haven’t seen the site before and can read Japanese, I highly recommend checking it out. It’s like an MLBTR...
2009 went by super fast. Here are my top ten events in Japanese baseball for the year that was. 10. Koji Uehara, Kenshin Kawakami sign with MLB teams; Yomiuri, Chunichi don’t notice. Uehara and...
Here’s one I didn’t think of: Jose Conteras is reportedly looking for a job in Japan. Sanspo reported a few days ago that Contreras reached out to the Hanshin Tigers, who despite being in nee...
Yusei Kikuchi is officially a pro. The young lefty has inked his first contract with the Seibu Lions. Unsurprisingly, Kikuchi gets the max deal: 100m yen (about $1m) signing bonus, a 15m yen ($15...
Here are some unorganized, rapid-fire notes about yesterday’s draft. Some of these are my own observations, others are from the media. In the end, ‘only’ six teams went after Yusei Kikuchi ...
My post on foreign players in the draft last year went over well, and I had meant to publish an update for 2009 prior to this year’s draft, but the gods of time weren’t on my side. In any cas...