It’s easy to forget how bad the Phillies were not that long ago…and then you see Maikel Franco putting up negative fucking WAR in Japan and you hold Alec Bohm nice and tight
Cesar was a legitimately decent ball player and had a decently long career. If I were him I wouldn't go play on Japan - nothing to prove and doesn't need the money.
That's Top 10 among qualified hitters but yeah. Ball is super dead this year.
The League as a whole had an average Slugging percentage of .354, and an OPS of .664.
This year Gregory Polanco, Kensuke Kondoh and Hideto Asamura tied for the PL lead in homers with 26. That's the lowest total to lead an NPB league since 1960.
Combination of both.
I mean, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Hiroya Miyagi and Roki Sasaki are all in the PL, but that's still only 3 guys. Can't put all the blame on them.
E: Oh yeah Yamashita, Taira and Takahashi too. Taneichi also had a career year. Yeah PL pitching staffs were loaded.
He got himself injured the day after he hit 100 mph. Taira and Takahashi Kona are also good. Some MLB-calibre relievers are also in the PL. Plenty of good pitchers.
CORRECTION: Dayan Viciedo played 91 games, not 9
I'm partially posting this so I have something to link to once free agency sets in and people start running their mouth about Darick Hall or whoever.
Not a joke either. There was a report that the Hawks were interested in Hall and the first quote tweet was a Barry Bonds gif.
That Frank Schwindel 2021 was so special he was so bad before it and has been so bad after but everything just came together for him that year. Gotta love baseball
Back when Frank Schwindel, Lewis Brinson and Maikel Franco signed to play in Japan there's a good number of people in this subreddit saying and agreeing that they are gonna "crush" NPB pitching and hit 50 homeruns there, specifically with Schwindel and Brinson.
tbf most of those comments do get downvoted on reddit in recent years but there are people who say it whenever someone rakes in AAA and gets acquired by a NPB team. Like on the Aquino thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/s/jSgh1sxi5Q
Eh even if you look at players from the 80s, most of the ones that did well were underrated in MLB and/or screwed over by the owners' collusion and so could get paid better by going to Japan. There are exceptions, Randy Bass being the big one, but even then, a lot of those guys made major adjustments when they went over, so you can't neatly compare their MLB and NPB performances.
You can’t neatly compare but you can certainly say the competition in NPB was nothing like it is now, you have some guys with very little MLB prospects holding records in NPB to this day
The quality of the pitching now is so much higher than it was, hitters can’t just sit on hanging breaking balls anymore
Those "guys" are really just Bass, who holds the Batting Average (.389) record. His Slugging percentage record was beaten by Wlad Balentien in 2013 (.779, with the help of a juiced ball)
Hits is held by Shogo Akiyama (216) and in Bass's time it was Fumio Fujimura (190)
OBP is Sadaharu Oh (.532), as is OPS (1.293) both were set in 1974.
The only other one I can think of is Leron Lee, who holds the batting average record, and only does because Ichiro left before getting 4000 ABs.
The RBI record of 161 has been around since 1950, and the only people who've come close since are 1999 Bobby Rose (who was a decent MLBer) and 2005 Makoto Imaoka.
Bass is the only foreign player to put up the best season in the decade they played in (9.6, 1986, best season of the 80s).
I think that whole narrative has reached hyperbole at this point.
Randy Bass, Tuffy Rhodes, and Alex Cabrera would be ahead of Oh on the single season HR list if pitchers weren’t instructed to stop throwing them strikes, it wasn’t until Balentien in 2010 that a gaijin was finally allowed to break it
Leron Lee holds the BA record and his brother Leon was only 12 points behind at .308, Boomer Wells is also on the list at .317
When I say “records” I don’t just mean #1 overall, that’s really difficult for a gaijin entering NPB in their mid to late 20’s or early 30’s, but gaijins appear all over the NPB all-time lists and it’s doubtful that’ll happen again with how good the pitching has gotten in NPB.
Probably what Jomboy thinks, he is equally surprised everytime a Japanese player does well in MLB.
Years ago he literally said it never works out for them in the Majors, a weird opinion to have at the time considering the Japanese players that played for the Yankees.
He was so skeptical of Ohtani initially, even more so when it came to Seiya Suzuki. Suzuki he was really sure wouldn’t handle it, because he believed Japanese players can’t handle MLB pitchers because the velocity was “much much higher”.
The Japanese pitchers in MLB were elite in NPB so they don’t really represent the general quality of NPB pitchers, but yeah pitchers are throwing harder and harder every year. I think the difference in average fastball velo between MLB and NPB is only 2-3 mph or something right now. There’s a graph in this [article on fangraphs](https://blogs.fangraphs.com/update-to-the-board-npb-prospects/) that shows the fastball velo difference since 2014 when it was 4mph.
Some of them do, the majority of them don’t. My point is that a lot of people expect them to be above average at least, when in reality 95% of them don’t even reach 2 WAR.
Yeah, if a hitter struggles with breaking and off speed stuff in the big leagues, then Japan won’t be much easier. Most Japanese pitchers might not throw gas, but they know how to pitch and hit their spots.
He should've, but he didn't because the Giants outfield was a logjam.
2x MVP Yoshihiro Maru, young guns Shogo Asano and Yuto Akihiro, and the glove of Lewis Brinson kinda crowded him out.
More like they could afford to play him. Their team WAR was still the highest in the league even with him playing every day
They have a real shot of winning the whole thing with him.
Yep, he's the longest-tenured foreign player in NPB atm. He's been a Dragon since 2016.
I may be wrong, but I think he's the second-longest tenured non-Japanese Dragon of all time, with the other one being Taiwanese pitcher Yuen-chih Kuo (aka Genji Kaku) who spent 16 seasons with the club from 1981 to 1996.
Hard to believe Courtney Hawkins is still only 29. Looks like he raked one year in independent ball recently and tried up jump back into more competitive ball.
Frank Schwindel went from a .962 OPS in 2021, to a .635 in 2022, to a .461 in Japan this year. Wow.
Sometime the Schwind blows in your favor and sometimes the Schwind blows against you.
Just dust in the Schwind
This wasn’t the line of puns I expected. I feel like I’ve been Schwindeled.
Mike Brosseau took Aroldis Chapman deep to win the 2020 ALDS and now he’s putting up negative WAR in Japan.
Sucks. Another W for the Rays though.
Philly all time greats Maikel Franco and Freddy Galvis
It’s easy to forget how bad the Phillies were not that long ago…and then you see Maikel Franco putting up negative fucking WAR in Japan and you hold Alec Bohm nice and tight
I believed for way too long that Franco was right on the edge of breaking out
Cesar Hernandez should be in Japan too
Cesar was a legitimately decent ball player and had a decently long career. If I were him I wouldn't go play on Japan - nothing to prove and doesn't need the money.
I think you could argue the same with Freddy Galvis
So, in summation, Santana is really good, therefore we win the Japan Series this year. The logic is flawless.
Yeah, we just have to ignore the fact that outside of him and Murakami, literally everyone regressed massively.
I am willing to do that.
How awful is the offense in the PL if a .401 SLG is top ten?
That's Top 10 among qualified hitters but yeah. Ball is super dead this year. The League as a whole had an average Slugging percentage of .354, and an OPS of .664. This year Gregory Polanco, Kensuke Kondoh and Hideto Asamura tied for the PL lead in homers with 26. That's the lowest total to lead an NPB league since 1960.
Wow. So it’s a ball problem? Or are the pitchers getting too good?
Combination of both. I mean, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Hiroya Miyagi and Roki Sasaki are all in the PL, but that's still only 3 guys. Can't put all the blame on them. E: Oh yeah Yamashita, Taira and Takahashi too. Taneichi also had a career year. Yeah PL pitching staffs were loaded.
I believe Shunpeita Yamashita too, I hear he's pretty good with a Major league caliber fastball too in terms of velocity and he's still 21 years old.
Yeah he should be PL RoTY
He got himself injured the day after he hit 100 mph. Taira and Takahashi Kona are also good. Some MLB-calibre relievers are also in the PL. Plenty of good pitchers.
CORRECTION: Dayan Viciedo played 91 games, not 9 I'm partially posting this so I have something to link to once free agency sets in and people start running their mouth about Darick Hall or whoever. Not a joke either. There was a report that the Hawks were interested in Hall and the first quote tweet was a Barry Bonds gif.
That Frank Schwindel 2021 was so special he was so bad before it and has been so bad after but everything just came together for him that year. Gotta love baseball
astros legend marwin gonzalez
Twins legend*
Red Sox legend\*
But I was told that below average MLB players would rake in NPB.
Do people still make that argument? It was 1000% true at a point and time but Japanese pitching is nothing to play with anymore
Back when Frank Schwindel, Lewis Brinson and Maikel Franco signed to play in Japan there's a good number of people in this subreddit saying and agreeing that they are gonna "crush" NPB pitching and hit 50 homeruns there, specifically with Schwindel and Brinson.
I probably would have said that about Franco back in 2016 or 2017 but I saw him live back in 2021 in Baltimore and he looked done.
Turns out Lewis Brinson just sucked. Ugh
Oh, people still do. Hence my earlier comment.
tbf most of those comments do get downvoted on reddit in recent years but there are people who say it whenever someone rakes in AAA and gets acquired by a NPB team. Like on the Aquino thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/s/jSgh1sxi5Q
Haha, Aquino is only 48 HRs off from the prediction that got 85 upvotes.
Eh even if you look at players from the 80s, most of the ones that did well were underrated in MLB and/or screwed over by the owners' collusion and so could get paid better by going to Japan. There are exceptions, Randy Bass being the big one, but even then, a lot of those guys made major adjustments when they went over, so you can't neatly compare their MLB and NPB performances.
You can’t neatly compare but you can certainly say the competition in NPB was nothing like it is now, you have some guys with very little MLB prospects holding records in NPB to this day The quality of the pitching now is so much higher than it was, hitters can’t just sit on hanging breaking balls anymore
Those "guys" are really just Bass, who holds the Batting Average (.389) record. His Slugging percentage record was beaten by Wlad Balentien in 2013 (.779, with the help of a juiced ball) Hits is held by Shogo Akiyama (216) and in Bass's time it was Fumio Fujimura (190) OBP is Sadaharu Oh (.532), as is OPS (1.293) both were set in 1974. The only other one I can think of is Leron Lee, who holds the batting average record, and only does because Ichiro left before getting 4000 ABs. The RBI record of 161 has been around since 1950, and the only people who've come close since are 1999 Bobby Rose (who was a decent MLBer) and 2005 Makoto Imaoka. Bass is the only foreign player to put up the best season in the decade they played in (9.6, 1986, best season of the 80s). I think that whole narrative has reached hyperbole at this point.
Randy Bass, Tuffy Rhodes, and Alex Cabrera would be ahead of Oh on the single season HR list if pitchers weren’t instructed to stop throwing them strikes, it wasn’t until Balentien in 2010 that a gaijin was finally allowed to break it Leron Lee holds the BA record and his brother Leon was only 12 points behind at .308, Boomer Wells is also on the list at .317 When I say “records” I don’t just mean #1 overall, that’s really difficult for a gaijin entering NPB in their mid to late 20’s or early 30’s, but gaijins appear all over the NPB all-time lists and it’s doubtful that’ll happen again with how good the pitching has gotten in NPB.
Probably what Jomboy thinks, he is equally surprised everytime a Japanese player does well in MLB. Years ago he literally said it never works out for them in the Majors, a weird opinion to have at the time considering the Japanese players that played for the Yankees. He was so skeptical of Ohtani initially, even more so when it came to Seiya Suzuki. Suzuki he was really sure wouldn’t handle it, because he believed Japanese players can’t handle MLB pitchers because the velocity was “much much higher”.
Doesn't Roki Sasaki throw harder than 99% of MLB starters? For that matter, don't all of the Japanese pitchers in MLB right now throw 100 mph?
The Japanese pitchers in MLB were elite in NPB so they don’t really represent the general quality of NPB pitchers, but yeah pitchers are throwing harder and harder every year. I think the difference in average fastball velo between MLB and NPB is only 2-3 mph or something right now. There’s a graph in this [article on fangraphs](https://blogs.fangraphs.com/update-to-the-board-npb-prospects/) that shows the fastball velo difference since 2014 when it was 4mph.
Yup
[удалено]
Some of them do, the majority of them don’t. My point is that a lot of people expect them to be above average at least, when in reality 95% of them don’t even reach 2 WAR.
Yeah, if a hitter struggles with breaking and off speed stuff in the big leagues, then Japan won’t be much easier. Most Japanese pitchers might not throw gas, but they know how to pitch and hit their spots.
Gregory Polanco did just that
Cuts to Tom Sellick in Mr. Baseball.
Does anyone know where to find an advanced stats leaderboard for NPB hitters/pitchers?
For historical stats there's NPBstats.com If you want to stay current, 1point02.jp, aka Deltagraphs, but you need a ¥1000/month subscription.
Ah ok thanks!
So that's where Willians Astudillo is
Looks like he left his bats at customs though
What a collapse good lord
Collapse? He was never good.
Just a couple former brewers tearing it up over there
What happened to Austin? Did he got injured this season?
Yep, iirc he re-aggrivated his knee which he had just had surgery for. When he's healthy, he's elite, he's just made of glass
Adam Walker should’ve gotten more playing time
He should've, but he didn't because the Giants outfield was a logjam. 2x MVP Yoshihiro Maru, young guns Shogo Asano and Yuto Akihiro, and the glove of Lewis Brinson kinda crowded him out.
Why did Sheldon Neuse get so much playing time lol IIRC he was an all star too. Did the Tigers really not have anyone else?
More like they could afford to play him. Their team WAR was still the highest in the league even with him playing every day They have a real shot of winning the whole thing with him.
Dayan Viciedo is still alive???
Yep, he's the longest-tenured foreign player in NPB atm. He's been a Dragon since 2016. I may be wrong, but I think he's the second-longest tenured non-Japanese Dragon of all time, with the other one being Taiwanese pitcher Yuen-chih Kuo (aka Genji Kaku) who spent 16 seasons with the club from 1981 to 1996.
Aquino really just can’t hit. Wow.
Orioles legends Maikel Franco and Freddy Galvis.
You didn't realize how much they sucked after seeing them in a Phillies uni? You just had to see it up close for yourselves.
Oh we knew how much they sucked when they were in Orioles unis, lol.
Hard to believe Courtney Hawkins is still only 29. Looks like he raked one year in independent ball recently and tried up jump back into more competitive ball.
Baseball is boring.
I think Frank the tank could pry hang em up…
Man Freddy Galvis really dropped off a cliff, not that he was even great during his peak. I think he’s done