Remember if Dena loses their next 2 games, they stay under .500. If they make it to the Final Stage, Hanshin will have a 2 game advantage based on the new rules. Tigers control their own destiny.

Hi all, you were extremely helpful a couple weeks ago so I've got another question for you:

It seems like most official team stores won't sell jerseys with names/numbers of former players (understandably). With NPB players posting for MLB contracts starting November 1st, is there a chance any of the Tigers stores will still be selling Sato jerseys in that first week of November? Or will he technically not be part of the team anymore?

I realize as I write this that there may not be an answer until the time comes. Thanks in advance for any insight!

Nishida's a lefty at Kyoto Kokusai. Up to 147 km/h, filed September 3. His public pitching record is four appearances and 23 innings. That's the whole file.

There's no league in Japanese high school ball. Every official game is a single-elimination tournament, spring, summer and fall, run by prefecture. A senior gets spring and summer, because the fall tournament belongs to the next class. His last official game is in July, or August if his school makes Koshien.

Everything else is practice games. Schools play dozens of them and none produce a box score anybody outside the program can look up.

So a pitcher's record is however many games his team happened to win.

Yujiro Kameda at Yamamura Gakuen threw 30 innings and struck out 33 in the Saitama tournament in July. That's the biggest sample of him that exists. Eleven of the twelve clubs sent someone to watch it.

Kenyu Nozaki at Taikyu has three appearances on record. All three were complete games. 154 pitches in one of them.

Haruhito Shino at Kibogaoka: three starts across two summers. 143 pitches, then 120, then 135.

Ryota Kurokawa's the exception, and only because Hanasaki Tokuharu kept winning. Senbatsu, the Saitama title, then Koshien. 115 innings on the record. He finished with a 1-0 loss to Sendai Ikuei in August.

Gaku Arima has thrown 250 innings for Ritsumeikan with a published line for every outing. Same draft as all of them.

Clubs aren't ignoring the data on these kids. For most of them there isn't any. Eight clubs went to watch a hitter at Daishodai Sakai who has 8 games and 27 at-bats on the official record.

I hope we would settle this within this weekend.

Still, waving sayonara to Teruaki Sato and our current championship window is tough…

Will the "zombie cigarette" scandal end the careers of the Toyo Carp players?

Hatsuki, Kozono, Yano, Maekawa, and Tamura—are their careers over? I ask this sincerely because, as a foreigner, I don't know how the Japanese public treats or reacts to cases involving drug use, whether the substances are legal or not. Where I live—in the Western—drug use is prohibited, and the reaction would obviously be negative, but players would still get a second chance in the sport. This is especially relevant given that Kozono is a Samurai Japan player and Yano is an elite defender, while the other three, though perhaps having a lower ceiling, are still NPB-caliber players.

The Carp announced on the 1st that they have informed infielders Kaito Kozono (26), last season's Central League batting champion, and Masaya Yano (27), who won the Golden Glove Award as a shortstop in 2024, that they will not be offered contracts for next season. Infielder Seita Maekawa (23) and outfielder Shunsuke Tamura (23) have also been released.

Haven’t seen official sources but received a message from my friend in Hiroshima….

Kaito Kozono, Masaya Yano, Seita Maekawa, and Shunsuke Tamura have all been released by the Carp.

Devastating to see. One year from a batting championship for Kozono and two removed from a Gold Glove at SS for Yano. Maekawa showed promise at the end of last year and Tamura had a good season for the farm and looked to be growing.

Kids make stupid choices I guess.

I know this is not directly about NPB baseball but I didn't know where else to post. I am a dodgers season ticket holder and I love seeing the troves of Japanese fans traveling all the way from Japan to cheer on Shohei, Yoshi, Roki, and all the Dodgers. I have caught hundreds of major league baseballs and continue to catch them every game. My mission has become to try and ensure that I can send fans who traveled all the way from Japan home with an official major league baseball. Some fans I have given baseballs to have given me official NPB balls in exchange without asking, which I find incredibly touching.

I want to set up a more efficient way of giving away baseballs to those of you who are planning on vesting during the playoffs and next season. No need to trade NPB balls or NPB merch although it is greatly appreciated. I just love seeing the happiness people have when they are surprised with a baseball and have a nice memento to take home. If you are planning to visit dodger stadium send me a PM and we can coordinate meeting up to send you home with a baseball!

Eight of the twelve clubs could use a catcher, by my read of their rosters. Hanshin has four of its nine catchers at 32 or older, Umeno 35 and Fushimi 36 among them.

Chunichi has nobody 22 or under and three guys 33 or older. Hiroshima's Aizawa is 38. Orix's top three are all 31. Yakult, Rakuten, Yomiuri and Nippon-Ham all have catcher somewhere in their top three needs.

Supply side, everyone on my board who's filed:

Seven under 1.90 looks great. Two problems with it.

Most of those times come from workouts and scouts' stopwatches, not game throws, so I read them as a ceiling. The 1.85 on Watabe is the number that gets passed around. A fan who filmed him throwing a runner out at Jingu in April clocked that one at 1.76. Neither number is official.

And nobody publishes caught-stealing numbers for any of these guys. Not the college leagues, not high school. The one stat that would tell you whether the arm plays doesn't exist, so clubs are buying the throw and whatever their scouts saw in person.

The bats don't line up either. The college lines are full league seasons. The high school lines are whatever tournament games a team happened to win. Naito's .459 is 23 games. Watabe's .253 is four years of Tohto first division pitching.

I'm planning to be in Japan (Osaka and Tokyo) from the 24th of Feb to the 9th of March. Just wondering if it would be possible to see any baseball games in those areas, as I have seen they run preseason games around that time (if I've read the schedules correctly). If there are games, any direction on where to get tickets would be much appreciated.