People are paying more attention to the MLB draft now. What with the publicity blitz MLB put on the thing last year who wouldn’t? I’ve been late getting on the bandwagon but I’m going to give it a shot — I’m that much more interested in amateur baseball due to my new gig.
Incidentally the first round of the Korean draft will happen June 6, the same day, (well…it’ll be the same time as the MLB draft is June 5) as the MLB amateur draft. Unlike the American version, the second, third and so on rounds of the Korean draft won’t happen until August.
There was an interesting moment in tonight’s Lotte/Hanwha game. Definitely a cultural misunderstanding, but as someone who’s lived in Korea for a while, I think I’m able to see this from both sides.
Ma Hae-yeong, a longtime Lotte fan favorite at the very (very) end of his career, was walked with the bases-loaded to net his 1,000th career RBI.
As one might expect the ball was taken aside for a keepsake. Somehow, pitcher Marty McLeary ended up with the ball in the dugout. The camera flashed back and forth between the dugout and the action, and McLeary was seen pretending to keep the ball when one of the Lotte assistants asked for it. I could see the assistant was trying to explain that the ball had special meaning to Ma (which, of course, McLeary was aware of).
Up till now I’ve steered clear of the hysteria brought on by Korea resuming American beef imports. I’ve been following it closely in both the Korean TV news and in the expat blog circles, but haven’t asserted any opinion on here.
I saw a small and rather feeble protest this evening in front of Ulsan University, where seven students hung a sign saying “American Beef Shouldn’t Be in Our Mouths” and started chanting. But in the time I went into a store and came out ten minutes later, the protesters had stopped. I casually walked over to see if there’d be anything more in store.
Most interesting to me personally has been the fact that the protesters, and those who have been the most vocal, are mostly teenagers. I came across this article today via Marmot’s Hole, in which it describes how various Korean pop celebs have been coming out against US beef in what would appear to be a kind of populist revolt where both fans and celebs are more-or-less piggybacking one another. Most of it happening on the Internet.
In what was his second straight subpar (by his standards) outing Yu Darvish (5-1) picked up the loss after surrendering a sacrifice fly off the bat of Hiram Bocachica with two outs in the bottom of the ninth Wednesday night at Seibu Dome. The 4-3 losswas Darvish’s first of the year.
It was also the second straight game Darvish gave up two HRs as both Takeya Nakamura and Toru Hosokawa went deep for Seibu.
The four earned runs raised Darvish’s ERA to 1.46, dropping him behind Rakuten’s Hisashi Iwakuma (1.39 ERA) in the Pacific League. In 67 1/3 innings Darvish has 60 strikeouts, which puts him on pace for a career mark in K/9.
Darvish was also chosen one of the Pacfic League’s players of the month for March/April, the other being designated hitter Takeshi Yamasaki of Rakuten. In the Central League the honors went to Takahiro Arai of Hanshin and Yakult Swallows lefty Masanori Ishikawa.
This comes from James by way of Mongdori, who I’m hoping made this video herself so I can stop this link genealogy. Have to make sure to cover all the bases.
Here’s a piece to get you set for Wang’s run at 7-0, a piece in the NY Sun by Tim Marchman, who I don’t link to often enough.
Here are the money shots:
For most of his time in the majors, Wang’s biggest weakness has been against left-handed hitters. Last year, for instance, he struck out 7.9% of those he faced, as against 17.8% of right-handers. There’s no mystery as to why. His nasty sinking fastball, which he routinely throws at 94 mph and can throw much harder, breaks down but also tilts — out and away from right-handers but right into the sweet spot where most left-handers like the ball. The same is true of his slider, his second-best pitch. Wang has usually tried to neutralize left-handers with a changeup that he rarely throws to right-handers, but it isn’t an especially effective pitch.
This year, he has slightly but noticeably changed his approach, throwing the fastball more often against left-handers and the changeup and slider less often, while mixing in the odd split-finger or cutter. So far, his strikeout rate against them is up to 12.2%, which isn’t fantastic, but represents an improvement of half over what he did last year. If he can keep doing as well while continuing to suppress left-handed power (he’s given up just one home run to left-handers in 82 plate appearances), he’ll have gone a long way toward plugging the biggest hole in his game. Against right-handers, Wang has been throwing a cut fastball a bit more often. It isn’t a great pitch, but it does give hitters something else to look for, and further shows his evolving style.
Hard to believe the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Rays turn 10 this year. Here’s a story by Jonah Keri of ESPN taking a look at the genesis of the two franchises, both of whom seemed poised for greatness.
As Keri illustrates, neither road has been easy. Arizona had several good years under the guidance of GM Joe Garagiola Jr., followed by the worst years in franchise history, before bringing on Josh Byrnes, who has done a tremendous job, particularly on the trade market. But as good as Byrnes is, you can make an argument that Garagiola had as big, if not bigger impact on the current team.
Still, save some acclaim for Garagiola, whose scouting and player development staff drafted and developed the two best players (year-to-date) on the current D-backs squad (Cy Young winner Brandon Webb and likely All-Star Conor Jackson), future MVP candidate Upton and several other key contributors.
With the odd week due to the Children’s Day holiday on Monday I waited an extra 24-hours to unleash this week’s rankings. As I’m writing this Ryu Hyun-jin has just walked in the tying run against Lotte. Surprisingly, the batter he walked, Kang Min-ho, is .326 career against arguably the best pitcher in the league.
FYI the KBO was been airing more games live over the Internet this season via Naver.com. I don’t quite understand how they decide what games will be on and when, but they’ve all been available over the past four days, including tonight’s games. Here’s the link.
Just did some comparisons of NPB and MLB offenses for 2005-07 – also condensed into the individual leagues (Central/Pacific of the NPB and American/National for MLB).
Just scratching the surface here, so nothing deep yet.
Well, as they say, all good things must come to an end. Dust must return to dust and the memory of the Turkmenbashi is fading like a soft wind over the Caspian.
A 246-foot tall, rocket ship-like monument to the late ruler of Turkmenistan, topped with a golden statue of himself that rotates to always face the sun, will be removed from the center of the Turkmen capital, state news media there have reported.
This news comes hot on the heels of the reorganizing of the calendar, which unbeknownst to most, save himself, was one of Saparmurat Niyazov’s crowning achievements.
Pretty neat story in the Korean league from yesterday as Cho Jin-ho won his first professional game in nearly five years when he scattered four hits over six innings, not allowing a run and picking up the win for Samsung.
Cho was signed out of high school by the Boston Red Sox and actually made 11 starts for Boston during 1998-99, compiling a 2-6 record and a 6.52 ERA over 58 professional innings. He spent three years in the Red Sox system before returning to Korea to play for SK.
In 2003 he went 4-5 for SK, winning most recently on August 23, 2003. However, after something of a scandal, Cho, at age 29, was then forced to complete his military service. Upon finishing he developed ligament troubles in his elbow and had to have surgery, causing him to miss another nine months.
This story has really stuck in my head over the last few days. My initial reaction was that the Koreans were being pigs. But then I thought about it, and thought about it, and now I’ve changed my opinion.
The council members here are Koreans from Gyeonggi. The site is the Nike company headquarters in Portland, Oregon.
Regional council members’ angered an international sports goods maker through making sexually explicit gestures during their visit to its headquarters abroad. The politicians quickly tried to explain themselves, claiming “difference of culture’” as an excuse, but businessmen in the United States called for an apology and prohibited the council members from visiting them again.
According to the Chosun Ilbo, the incident began when seven members of Gyeonggi provincial council visited the headquarters of the world’s largest sports utilities maker Nike in Portland, USA, early March as part of their efforts to forge ties between Korea and the US. While there, two council members reportedly touched the breasts and private parts of a female statue. Witnesses said they even tried to put their hands in the statue’s crotch while giggling. This left many of the workers there feeling horrified.
I didn’t really talk about it here on EWC, but I thought ESPN’s outing of Miguel Tejada’s age was outrageous. Classless. Well, at any rate, here’s good story from the Houston Chronicle, mostly concerning the Astros’ Wandy Rodriguez’s road to the majors, talking about how he lied about his age in order to reinvent himself as a pitching prospect after a failed attempt to be signed as an outfielder.
Born Jan. 18, 1979, Wandy Rodriguez persuaded a friend to let him borrow his identity. Cabreja was born Aug. 18, 1981, making him 17 when current Washington Nationals bullpen coach and former Astros minor league pitching coach Ricardo Aponte scouted Rodriguez.
Rodriguez pitched well enough for the Astros to receive a $5,000 signing bonus from scout Julio Linares. By comparison, that year the Astros gave a $725,000 bonus to outfielder Mike Rosamond, their first pick in the supplemental round.
“I gave $500 of that to my uncle and $500 to Coronado,” Rodriguez said.
He took about $300 for himself to buy some clothes and gave his father the rest to buy cattle.
This has me wondering if this ever happens in Asia. What’s to stop an 18-year-old Korean kid from re-enrolling in a baseball school as a freshman? My guess is that it would be a little hard to get by the bureaucrats here.
The hissy fit thrown by Buzz Bissinger on the set of whatever-Bob-Costas’-HBO-show-is-called has been well-documented on blogs everywhere the past few days, but this article in this week’s edition of The Economist might help us better understand the source of Buzz’s anger.
The piece details the increasingly dire situation of the New York Times, a paper that Buzz often contributes to, and other American print media outlets, who for are now faced with an evolve or die proposition. Subscription rates at the Times have fallen 3.9% over the last year. More importantly, as far as newspapers are concerned, both its advertising revenue (-12.5%) and share price (-20%) have also dropped during the past year.
One of the biggest difficulties I have in learning how to scout players is identifying pitches and measuring how well prospects throw them. With high school and university level pitchers, the difference between a curveball, slider, or lord forbid, a cutter, isn’t always as simple as looking at the radar gun. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Natural movement is critical to identify because it just can’t be taught. But daaaamn that’s hard to see, unless perhaps you’re like my boss and pitched professionally for a good part of your life.
Too bad for me there’s no pitch f/x data for Korean high school kids. Maybe someday.
At this point I think there’s plenty of info to be gained from Pitch f/x and plenty of info not to be gained. One thing for sure, there’s a boatload of research going on, and the info itself is becoming more and more accessible to the general public.
Here’s a fun tool that enables you to easily call up pitch f/x data from any pitcher from any game of 2008. While some of the data will likely bewilder you (as it did me) there are some interesting tidbits for you to chew on, mostly related to pitch speed, selection and placement. Helps me anyway.
Son of Sam Horn has a handy wiki linked from the tool that attempts to explain the data in plain English.
Last month a dental nurse and several friends walked into a Higashi Matsuyama Itoyokado McDonald’s in Saitama Prefecture, but what followed was no ordinary meal.
The group apparently took up a corner counter not easily visible to serving staff and went about their purportedly pornographic proclivities.
Ochiai apparently spent the time with his hands up Shimada’s skirt as he displayed his deft handiwork, Ishii did the filming and Nishizumi acted as a barrier and barked out orders to participants — so the cops say, anyway.
After some 30 minutes of filming, the police arrived and arrested the crew, who were reportedly led away individually and each taken to a nearby police station in separate patrol cars.
I want to mention a few observations I had as the 42nd President’s Cup, which I was scouting through this last Monday, heads toward the final today (1 p.m. KBS for those living in Korea). For the most part Koreans don’t care about high school baseball anymore, but this wasn’t always the case. Many of the baseball schools were founded during the Japanese colonial period and have over 100-year histories. Kyeongi High School, which is based in Seoul and advanced to the final yesterday, was founded in 1905.
According to the tournament Web site approximately 1,500 students in South Korea attend what are essentially “baseball high schools.” There are similarly styled schools in Japan, but the number of players exceeds 5,000. During the past five years a number of these baseball schools in Korea have closed.
Last night Westbay-san of japanesebaseball.com posted this into the comments section of a story about the Giants considering a switch to a six-man rotation (a situation they’ve avoided by sending Barry Zito to the bullpen). Just in case there are those who don’t always read the comments, I’m going to turn the “comment” into its own post.
At the time of the post I was surprised Westbay-san didn’t check in with an opinion on the subject, but now we know why. It’s because he was busy emailing Bobby Valentine about it.
