BayStars New President - Kaji Takao

As anyone who has read my assessment of Tashiro-kantoku daihyo taking over for Yano-kantoku can attest to, I'm not a very good judge of potential leadership when it comes to the BayStars. I liked Yano-kantoku's stance where he allowed the players to be themselves and expected them to be professionals - but that wasn't working out. I thought that Tashiro-ni-gun kantoku would be a good fit, as he had struck me more of a strict father figure from what I'd seen of him on the farm, but he didn't turn out that way. All I can say for sure is that something revolutionary needs to be done, and the cleaning out of the front office has all the signs of a revolution about to start.

Or so I thought until I read on October 10th about the BayStars hiring former Dentsu employee Kaji Takao as the new club president. He talks of making a team with deep roots in the community. And changing Yokohama (the team? the city?). After stating that a new manager hasn't been decided on, he says that a strict person would be best. How about a smart manager? While he hasn't appeared to give the new managerial position much thought, he does seem quite set on getting Yokohama High's slugger Tsutsugoh Yoshitomo, as though drafting a high school hitter will fix our pitching woes. (Our first round pick last year was a college hitter, and he didn't last the whole season.) All I've read based on Kaji-president's press conference is more of the generic same, not change.

Then there's the issue of his former employer, Dentsu. Dentsu is one of the behemoth communications conglomerates, this one focusing on advertising. The area to which I've had dealings with Dentsu is in the realm of NPB BIS. NPB has put the stewardship of the Baseball Information Services into Dentsu's hands, and pay Dentsu a small fortune each year to run the systems. Dentsu, in turn, takes money from each of the teams and the various news and publishing agencies, as well as game makers, for the data services. Or that's what they seem to want people to believe. What they really seem to be selling, though, is dedicated line service to their mainframes along with support fees. Dentsu is not actively making the NPB BIS data work for either the teams nor the public, they're just living off the fat caused by charging monopoly prices for their outdated technologies.

I'm aware of a feasibility study done this past summer to look into downsizing the data from the mainframe and having NPB take over managing their own data for the good of NPB. While all of the data gathered showed huge savings for NPB and even potential new earnings, the conclusion was somehow hijacked into saying that it's best to just leave things the way they are. I used to build applications for downsizing mainframe data into relational and XML databases (my area of specialty). Yet my understanding that the main reason the project was aborted was because those doing the study were unaware of how to move the data off of Dentsu's mainframes to take control. Without that first step, nothing else would be feasible, no matter how much more beneficial to NPB the undertaking might be.

So you see, I don't think very highly of Dentsu. I've seen their NPB BIS "solutions" and wondered how they could possibly sell such antiquated systems in this day and age. And the conclusions of the above study leave me flabbergasted, thinking that there may have been some under the table transfers going on to help reach said conclusions in the face of all the good moving away from the current setup would do.

Now the BayStars are getting a former Dentsu-man to head the ball club. Kaji-san may turn out to be a great, forward thinking guy. But I'm stuck with this stigma attached him, and am looking hard for something positive.

Today (Ocotber 13, 2009) there was something positive. Nikkan Sports reported that Fox Sports in the U.S. is reporting that the "Yokohama Bay Stars [...] are making a 'concentrated effort' to hire Valentine, according to a major-league source." [Source] That's interesting. A Japanese newspaper is getting its news about a Japanese team from a North American news outlet? (Someone please tell me that Fox Sports is more reliable than Fox's 24 hour nonsensical news channel of lies and innuendo.)

So, there you have it. My extremely mixed up feelings about the future of the BayStars under Kaji-president.

The SeaRex FanFest is on November 21st. I hope to go to it before heading to the Tokyo SABR meeting that evening. And as I got a chance to speak with Sasaki-president at the event last year, I do hope to be able to get a better picture of Kaji-president at this year's event.

Hmm, you strike quite a pessimistic tone with this. I have to agree with your sentiments if not your analysis, since I know F-all about Dentsu. The Baystars problems will take a long time to fix, but at least in Randolph they seem to have a good pitcher (until the Giants get him). Hopefully we'll see an end to bizarre substitutions too. It got to the stage where my wife and I were too embarrassed to go to games. At least Uchikawa has a nice girlfriend.

That Valentine rumour has been going around for a while; don't you think he'll be too expensive?

Well, I was over-optimistic with the promotion of Tashiro-kantoku at the start of inter-league play. Hopefully this will negate that and reality will land somewhere in the middle for next season.

Randolph was an incredible find, perhaps the biggest bright spot of the season. I just don't think that he's made to go the distance that often, but that seemed to be the only way of preserving his tenuous leads. Hopefully the scout that found him wasn't thrown out with the rest of the bath water. (Unless it was the same scout who found Good-For-No-More-Than-Four Mastny.)

As for the Valentine rumor, I don't know what to think as Rosenthal-san is rather vague as to his source for it. Here's my problem: When it was announced that Lotte wouldn't be signing Valentine last winter, Matt and I both took to writing "Valentine to Yokohama in 2010" in our blogs and other commentary. I know that scouts use this site as a portal to other news and blog sites, so those kinds of comments may sink in and eventually become "a concentrated effort" in the minds of some MLB people. It's like the telephone game from back in grade school, where the message said to your neighbor changes a little with each telling until it's unrecognizable at the end. That's why citing sources and including supporting evidence when making a claim is so important to journalism, yet rarely done. I'm especially upset with Nikkan Sports for just quoting the Fox Sports article and not doing any kind of investigation themselves. (Uh, oh. I'm falling back into my pessimistic hole.)

As for the price tag that would come with Valentine-kantoku, I'm fairly sure he'd take a third what Lotte was paying him. But he does come with a support staff. If all of the positions in the front office haven't yet been filled, then that shouldn't be a problem, as his people are the kind that do multiple jobs very well, eliminating the need for several positions. (Isn't it said that of every 4 employees in a typical Japanese office the majority of the work is done by 1 person? Bobby's support staff is filled with those do-it-all individuals.)

Valentine-kantoku's nemesis this past season, Akira Ishikawa, had been spreading all kinds of lies and innuendo (Microsoft/Fox News style) all season to other clubs, Yokohama included, in an attempt to prevent anyone else from approaching Bobby. As Jim Allen hints at in his Hot Corner segment last week, not all NPB execs were buying into the subterfuge (giving me some hope).

Well, I guess that only time will tell.

Dentsu are a conservative and rather hidebound company still stuck in the 1970s. As such they suit the NPB who are also part of the old establishment and conservative in theh extreme. I would say that your new president is a return for a favour and whilst he may indeed be a good thing my experience of top management in this type of organisation leads me to expect the same old........

Michael - what is you opinion on the new BayStars manager Obana and how will he and Takao revive the BayStars?

For now I'll just say that Obana appears to bring hope for change to the BayStars' pitching deficit. I'll write more after the SeaRex Fan Fest on the 21st.