Adjust Font Size: A A       Guest settings   Register

Yokohama’s Offseason

NPB Tracker Archives

Yokohama’s Offseason

by Patrick Newman (Dec 22, 2009)

Yokohama finished up their offseason shopping last week, introducing Takayuki Shinohara and Daisuke Hayakawa, and announcing the signing of Termel Sledge. Here’s the complete list of BayStars acquisitions, which ran on Sponich and was helpfully translated on Yakyu Baka:

PosPlayer NameAgePrevious Team
PShimizu, Naoyuki34Chiba Lotte Marines
PBootcheck, Chris31MLB – Pirates
PShinohara, Takayuki33Softbank Hawks
PSakamoto, Yataro27Nippon Ham Fighters
PMatsuyama, Suguru20Nippon Ham Fighters
PSugihara, Yo24Nomo BC
PWang, Yi-Zheng24CPBL – Bears
CHashimoto, Tasuku33Chiba Lotte Marines
INFInada, Naoto30Nippon Ham Fighters
INFCastillo, Jose28CPBL – Lions
OFSledge, Terrmel32Nippon Ham Fighters
OFHayakawa, Daisuke34Chiba Lotte Marines

That’s a decent group of players, but the key here is the guys they’ll be taking plate appearances and innings away from.

Yokohama has some decent core hitters (Shuichi Murata, Seiichi Uchikawa), but in 2009 they had too many positions that they got no offense from. In 2009, the ‘Stars had four who got over 100 plate appearances despite hitting under .200. Dropping the number to 40 pa’s reveals another four. The additions of Hashimoto, Inada, Hayakawa and Castillo should be a huge improvement over that group. A little improvement from younger guys like Keijiro Matsumoto wouldn’t hurt either.

On the mound, Yokohama only had one reliable starter (Daisuke Miura) in 2009, and only three relievers who threw more than 50 innings (Hiroyuki Sanada, Shun Yamaguchi, Kentaro Takasaki). To that end, Shimizu is a nice pickup. He’s really not the ace he’s sometimes billed as, but should absorb about 150 innings. The real improvements to the rotation, however, are already on the roster: full seasons from Hayato Terahara and Stephen Randolph. I see the bullpen arms ‘Hama acquired mostly interesting question marks — a former dominator who hasn’t pitched recently (Shinohara), a guy with a couple good seasons to his name (Sakamoto) and an American with good velocity but poor command at the MLB level (Bootcheck).

Finally, there is a feel-good story amongst this: Sugihara is a former Lotte farmhand, but was released after the 2006 season. He had been working at a Docomo mobile phone shop in Osaka and getting by on 80,000 yen ($800) per month while moonlighting with the Nomo Baseball Club, and now he’s getting another chance.

Is all this enough to get Yokohama off the cellar? We’ll have to see, but the BayStars should definitely be closer to the pack in 2010.


Back to the works of Patrick Newman
Search for Pro Yakyu news and information
Copyright (c) 1995-2024 JapaneseBaseball.com.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Some rights reserved.