Slugging It Out in Japan (Again for the First Time)

[Renfro]

One of the first "real" baseball books I read was Slugging It Out in Japan by former Montreal Expo Warren Cromartie (with Robert Whiting).

This was decades ago. I recently picked up the book again. Thusly inspired and not having played the base game due to Perfect Team obsession for the past three years, I decided to start a new dynasty with a team in the [league redacted] Organization.

But not as the Yomiuri Giants, whom Cromartie played for.

They were like the Yankees, and the Dodgers, and the Mets - all put together. And then some. - Warren Cromartie (pg. 13)

And the Mets?!? Hey, I fondly - okay, much more than fondly - remember '86 ... but the Mets?!?

My intent was to do some quick reading on the teams in the *** and go from there but when I read that the Tokyo Yakult Swallows of the Central League were known for their umbrella-based run celebrations - and that Norichika "Nori" Aoki* plays for them - I decided to accept their offer of $40,000 / 4 years.

The pre-season predicts us to finish 5th in the 6-team Central.



Expect posts in this Dynasty Report to sometimes contain box scores, to sometimes contain snippets of game logs (can't wait for Aoki to "charge the mound"), and to always contains a quote from "the book." Posts will be published on an irregular schedule.

Notes:

*While you may rightly infer that I am indeed a New York Mets fan, the reason Aoki's inclusion in the Swallows is not because he played for the Mets. The reason is because my second-favorite team is the Milwaukee Brewers, the team Aoki first played for in the Major Leagues. I think fondly of those I lived in Milwaukee. From downtown Milwaukee, you could take the Hank Aaron bike path all the way to the stadium.

[Renfro]

space reserved

[Renfro]

"Hello," he [baseball legend and then Giants manager Sadaharu Oh] said, greeting me in English, "how are you ? Welcome to Japan." Then he smiled and said, "We must win."

"We must win?"

He nodded, and repeated more firmly this time: "We must win." - Warren Cromartie, pg. 17

March 20, 2020. Opening Day against the Hanshin Tigers

Let's sort of get to know this team that I'm managing. I was so geeked to play that I didn't spend any time scouting the team before diving into the game.

But I knew that the 38-year old Nori Aoki was playing. And there he was, penciled in to bat second behind the 35-year old Tomotaka Sakaguchi, nicknamed "Gucci" (favorite band: Anamanaguchi?). But further on down the batting order I noticed another familiar name: Alcides Escobar, long time Kansas City Royals and member of that 2015 World Champion team. At only 33, he's looking to put up some numbers and maybe catch on with another MLB club.

I didn't know any of the players on the team - at least on the starting 9. I figured: we'd learn about each other on the way.

I almost lost the game in the 7th because I had forgotten to turn on the "no warm up needed" option for the relief pitchers. I tend to play the handedness matchup and so when I needed to insert a pitcher after having pinch hit in the 6th, lefty Naruki Terashima wasn't exactly warmed up.

He promptly gave up two singles, the second one to Justin Bour (!)*, who would eventually come around to score and tie the game on a fielder's choice. Justin Bour signed with the Hanshin Tigers for roughly 2.5 million US.

Yasuhiro "Ryan" Ogawa's great opening day effort - 10 K's in 5 innings - would not earn us the win. Truth be told, my infield wasn't playing in at that fielder's choice either so chalk that up to bad managing.

No worries. We won it in 12th on a Gucci double that scored the hard-running and 45-rated speed Shingo Kawabata from first. For the game, Gucci went 5-6 with a walk, a run scored, and a RBI. Great first impression from my leadoff hitter.



Notes:

* IRL, Justin Bour would leave the Hanshin Tigers at the end of the 2020 season, after batting .243 with 17 honers in 99 games.

Executed my favorite play: the double-steal. The record for stolen bases in the league is held by Yutaka Fukumoto, who swiped 106 bases in 1972. For comparison's sake, the modern MLB record is 130, set by Rickey Henderson in 1982.

I don't plan on writing after every game, but an extra-inning win in our home opener demanded a few words. Plus, I do play each game.

[Renfro]

In time, I go the feeling that the Giant front office didn't want their guys to mix with the 'gaijin' too much. I think they were afraid the players would learn bad habits from us. Perhaps it was paranoia. Perhaps it wasn't. That was one of the things about Japan I was beginning to discover. You never really knew where you stood, because the Japanese were reluctant to tell you. It was easy to be paranoid in that environment. Culture shock was setting in. - Warren Cromartie, pg. 21

So I got the gang together and took the team photo posted on this forum post. It was only then that I realized that three other ex-MLB players were on the roster: Gabriel Ynoa (BAL), Albert Suarez (SFG), and Scott "Scooter" McGough (MIA). Unlike Escobar and Aoki, these three had barely 100 games among them in the major leagues.

In his MLB career, McGough - and I silently vowed never to call him by his nickname "Scooter", as there's only one Scooter in the history of baseball for me* - pitched in 6 games for Miami. In 6.2 innings pitched, he amassed an ERA of 9.45. Didn't give up a homer, though.

This is his second year for the Swallows, and he's proven himself to be a valuable setup guy and occasional closer. In nearly 70 innings last year, he went 6-3 with a 3.15 ERA, 1.35 WHP and earned 11 saves and 18 holds while amassing 1.5 WAR. I learned that he's from Pittsburgh, PA, a city dear to my heart, and we had a good time reminiscing about the Monongahela Incline. He told me about the Takao Tozan Cable, which is the steepest railway line in all of Japan. I asked him if he's seen the movie "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" and he just gave me a blank stare. Maybe "films that take place in Pittsburgh" isn't one of his "varied interests."

Meanwhile, I spoke briefly to Gabriel Ynoa and Albert Suarez, my third and fourth starters. I think Ynoa was a flyer on one of my deep fantasy teams and I was still holding a grudge.

But I really wanted to talk to the guy with the Charlie Chaplin moustache. His name is Yuhei Takai, our starting right fielder. The 35-year old has played for the Swallows for his entire career, 16 years. He's "thick headed." I went over to him and we exchanged stiff greetings. I resisted the urge to ask him if he's ever seen "The General."

Notes:

* Phil Rizzuto's the only Scooter for me, ex-Brewer Scooter Gennett be damned. While I'm not a Yankee fan, my earliest memories of watching baseball was of the Yankees with Rizzuto on the broadcast team.

[Sizeman21]

I love this dynasty already. I love the *** league and Japanese baseball. Japanese baseball is not written about much on the forums, so thank you for diving in. I will be following along.

[assamarra]

Originally Posted by Sizeman21

I love this dynasty already. I love the *** league and Japanese baseball. Japanese baseball is not written about much on the forums, so thank you for diving in. I will be following along.

Great dynasty idea, I will also be following.

I am starting a *** online league with OOTP22 when it is released

[DD Martin]

I will be really curious to see how the experience of running a big league team in Japan goes for you. Good luck.

[Renfro]

March 21, 2020
Game 2: versus the Hanshin Tigers

I indicated that I would not write about every game but I just had to check in after having my mind blown away by my pitching staff, specifically 23-year old Noboru Shimizu.

He faced 21 batters and struck out 12 of them. This coming on the heels of Ogawa's 10 Ks yesterday. What's more, the bullpen, including McGough, struck out 7 Tigers en route to preserving the win for Shimizu.

What's up with all these strikeouts? Well, a few things: I've learnt that the strike zone is bigger in the ***, and Shimizu's spin rate approaches MLB levels.

Also, what's up with the facial hair? If you scroll up to the team picture, you'll see lots of guys with a variety of facial hair. I thought facial hair on Japanese-born players was not permitted. Apparently, in this universe we can implement the 4-man limit on foreign-born players on active rosters (and yes, you can change this in the settings), but not the one typically imposed on a man's facial hair in the ***.

Internet search upon internet search did not find a definitive source for any kind of de facto league-wide facial hair policy in the ***. (Meanwhile, it's quite easy to find the exact words for the NY Yankee's facial hair policy.) I scanned a whole bunch of photos of Swallows players and the only ones that had any kind of facial hair were foreign-born. I'm looking at you David Buchanan of the 2014-15 Philadelphia Phillies.

I did learn a lot about the cultural significance of facial hair in Japan. You can trace this back to the Samurai of the Edo period (1603-1868) and earlier. A samurai had to have facial hair. It represented his fighting spirit. Fast forward to the shift to a civilian government, and having facial hair (even the famous "top knot" of a samurai) came to be seen as an intent to rebel, or at least, being a person of bad influence. The history gets complicated moving into and beyond the Meiji-era. It sounds like I can spout these important time periods of Japan but I lost about an hour on the internet looking up all this stuff, and more.

So I'll stop here and get back to playing. Oh, and here's Noboru Shimizu:

All of our pitchers threw 100-150 pitches every day. Because they threw so many different kinds of pitches - curves, sliders, fork balls, 'shooto' balls, and whatnot - management said that constant practice was necessary to perfect their form and have sharp control. The pitchers were good. You had to grant them that. They could snap off that breaking pitch on the outside corner on a 3-2 count every time. A lot of major leaguers couldn't do that.

But any American coach or sports physician would say that so much pitching is bad for the arm. The arm needs rest, they'd tell you. Every time you throw you tear muscles, and if you pitch a nine-inning game, three or four days are required for the muscles to heal and the tissue to regenerate. The Japanese either did not believe that, or if they did, they did not care. Everything was 'samurai' guts and spirit. If you had enough of that, then you could throw all day.

Pitching coach Horiuchi once explained the Japanese philosophy to a BBC television interviewer: 'You can overcome fatigue by willpower,' he said, 'If your mental attitude is right, you can make your body work. They's why we emphasize mental training."'

...

It was a praiseworthy attitude, but it also explained why you seldom saw successful pitchers in Japan over the age of 30 - and why so many pitchers on our team had arm trouble." - Cromartie, pg 49-50 (1992)

It should be noted that there are two pitchers on my staff who are 40: reliever Ryoto Igarashi and fifth starter Masanori Shikawa. Things have changed since Cromartie's time in the East. And Cromartie refers to the "Shuuto." That pitch has its own Wikipedia entry.

[tehsuigi]

Great to see others simming the ***; if you want the legitimate jerseys, the All-in-One mod or my *** Quickstart can help you get setup.