Simon Currie has his new NPB Power Rankings up hot off the big Hanshin/Chunichi split. He’s also got some info at the bottom pertaining to the demotion of Koji Uehara. Pretty soon the Giants are going to have a pretty good team down there.
1. Hanshin Tigers (1) 18-6-1 .750
Keeps on going strong, splitting the series against […]

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I suppose this will be the last Cubs signing from Korea that I haven’t seen play much first-hand. I don’t even have a lot to report, but I at least wanted to acknowledge his signing and pass along some of what I’ve heard since it’s clearly been big news in my part of the world. […]

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I’ve got all this great baseball stuff stuck up in my brain, yet the post I’ve been the most excited to write is about this 80-year-old Japanese robot named Gakutensoku.
Gakutensoku was built in 1928 by biologist Makoto Nishimura, and first exhibited in Kyoto as part of the formal celebration of the ascension of Showa Emperor […]

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Since I’m late with these anyway, to the extent that this week’s games are happening as I type this, I’m going to make this an abbreviated version. I was able to take in a couple KBO games while I was in Seoul. The first was last Wednesday’s LG/Hanwha game at Jamsil. The Twins led the […]

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In case you missed it (I certainly did) the Rays coming out party has officially happened. One of the key plays over the weekend came off the bat of Akinori Iwamura, who hit a clutch 2-run blast to right during the Rays sweep of the Red Sox.
Here’s former Seibu Lion Orestes Destrade making the call […]

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1. Tong-Yi Lions (17-7-0): The Tong Yi-Lions remain the team to beat in the CPBL so far this season, leading the La New Bears by 2 1/2 games with a 17-7-0 record. Starting pitcher Pan Wei-Lun (3-0, 0.50 E.R.A) and former Anaheim Angels/Cleveland Indians starter Lou Pote (3-0, 2.60) lead the Lions pitching […]

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Just a note to readers…it’ll be a little quiet for another day or so. I’ve been in Seoul taking in the 42nd annual President’s Cup over the past five days. I’ll have plenty to report once I go home, but in the meantime I’m struggling to even make it through my reader and email in the […]

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DATELINE: Bloomington, Indiana, USA
According to the 2000 Census there are 1,008 Korean people in Bloomington, though the Indiana University student body likely swells those numbers off of the books. In any event, I’m now convinced that all of them know Mama’s Restaurant: “Korean Cuisine,” downstairs from the yoga place and caddy corner to the Sherman-Williams […]

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Written by Matt DeWoskin
This is my attempt to settle a barroom debate. If you’re a baseball fan and you’ve spent any amount of time in the Pacific Rim talking about baseball in a bar, you’ve had this discussion. “Who would you like to see play here?”
Before I start this, I feel it’s important to set […]

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I’ve been reading Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle for the first time in about a decade. I’ve mentioned before the title was in part the inspiration for EWC. Actually, we’d toyed with the idea of simply calling it East, and at one point there was the idea of calling it Pacific Rim Sports. My […]

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John Kalk, who’s one of the kings of pitch f/x analysis on his own site has done a guest post at rotoauthority analysing Fukudome’s nice start. The man is sporting a .396 BABIP these days, which is pretty amazing and unsustainable, but as Kalk diagnoses, Kosuke doesn’t swing at many bad balls. There are a couple […]

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A recent conversation thread on the EWC fantasy league site–in which my lowly Stinky Tofu Brigade is slowly making its climb up from 19th place out of 20 teams to the middle of the pack–brought up a good reader’s poll topic: Which team has the most annoying fans? There’s some stiff competition: Yankees […]

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From Hello Kitty Hell:
This is what Guatemalan anti-narcotics police found when they seized 1.2 tons of the cocaine on its way to Mexico on April 13th. Now, this really should not come as a surprise to anyone. Cocaine and Hello Kitty display an awful lot of the same properties when it comes to addiction so […]

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I wanted to point out an article I saw yesterday in the Wall Street Journal online called The Evolution from Homers to Holds, written by the site’s fantasy baseball guy. The article is more-or-less a har har rundown of some of the more obscure fantasy stats, which for the writer’s purpose includes holds. He’s kind […]

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South Korean president Lee Myung-bak’s visit with the president of the United States has been big news here and the meeting has been getting lots of coverage most of the week.
I’d say this sums up the meeting pretty well:
Lee drove a golf cart, with Bush seated in the assistant driver’s seat, to the cabin area, while […]

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Good piece in today’s New York Times about tensions being fleshed out between sports franchises, leagues and reporters, due to the emergence of sports blogging, or as bloggers are fond of calling it — online media.
The dispute has grown lately between the press and organized sports over issues like how reporters cover teams, who owns the […]

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I’ll explore this further as the season goes on but I’m starting to think the SK Wyvrens may be the best professional team in Asia. I know that’s a loaded statement, and one that deserves more than a sentence or two at the top of a weekly power rankings, but I believe it to be […]

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A couple of minor league teams in South Dakota, the Sioux Falls Canaries and Dakota Provisions, are teaming up to bring fans a new item at the concession stands — Fowl Balls.
But these aren’t any ordinary balls, these are testicles. Deep fried turkey testicles.
The press-release says turkey testicles are delicacies in Japan and China. For […]

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And when I say “sacked,” I don’t mean the British vernacular for being fired. In case you missed it, the CNN International Reporter Richard Quest was arrested last week in Central Park for what amounted to a park curfew violation. However, further details have emerged.
Seemingly with glee from MSNBC:
A CNN journalist who was arrested in […]

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How about this? The Giants, with Noah Lowry aiming to come off the disabled list sometime next month, are seriously considering going with a Japanese-style six-man rotation.
Noah Lowry hopes to make his 2008 debut in May. The question becomes which starter gets dropped from the rotation to make room for Lowry? The answer might be […]

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