japanese-baseball Page index.xml - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
MLB clubs don't want Trevor Bauer so he's signing with a Japanese travel team
After yet another Spring in which Trevor Bauer posts pics of himself at Spring Training and tries to convince us all that he has just tons of support and interest among MLB teams who want to hire him but can’t, Bauer has finally been signed — by a Japanese travel team called Asian Breeze. ...
Shohei Ohtani's most likely landing spot is the NL West
We’ve come to the end of our tour of the islands of every MLB team’s offseason outlook. We wrap up in the NL West, still the favorite landing place for Shohei Ohtani, as two of the rivals here are going to duke it out to bring him either slightly up the coast or six hours up it. One more time…...
America is one Trevor Bauer lighter and looks fantastic!
If baseball fans out there are feeling just a touch more exuberant, or looking in the mirror and thinking they’re having a good day — or maybe had the motivation to add just one more rep or set to their workout this morning — there’s a reason for it. We, as a society, have successfully punted Trevor...
der Fußballbundesliga?
The partnership between the NFL and the German Bundesliga, the top tier of the country’s professional soccer scene, is an interesting pair on its own. They both dominate their domestic markets. Dirk Nowitzki and Leon Draisaitl have come from Deutschland to dominate in North America. Steve Cherundolo...
The baseball is deflated again
I’m cribbing heavily from Joe Sheehan’s newsletter again, but in his latest missive he points out that things keep getting better and better for pitchers. Thanks to technology and greater study, they discover new pitches or tweaks to existing ones as they keep throwing harder and harder. At the same...
Japanese baseball is light years ahead of MLB
Major League Baseball is great. As long as no one is complaining about the unwritten rules and Nick Castellanos isn’t at the plate, the game is laid back and fun. I doubt I could enjoy it any more than I already do....
Japanese High School Team Advances To The Semifinals On Two-Run, Walk-Off Suicide Squeeze
The Japanese High School Baseball Championship—better known as the Summer Koshien—is where legends are made. A young player could do nothing else notable in the sport of baseball ever again, and still be revered as a Japanese icon should he have a world-class tournament. It’s perhaps the single most...
Watch Shohei Otani Learn How Hard It Is To Get A Hit Off Shohei Otani
It could be a while before we see Japanese two-way superstar Shohei Otani in MLB. The new collective bargaining agreement has strict caps on international free agent spending for players under 25, which should be a deterrent for the 22-year-old Otani—though his current team, the Nippon Ham Fighters,...
Shohei Otani, World's Coolest Baseball Player, Crushes A Ball Into The Tokyo Dome Ceiling
Some things that 22-year-old Shohei Otani has done this year: break his own record for the fastest pitch ever thrown in Japanese baseball (102 mph), post a 1.86 ERA and 0.96 WHIP in 20 games as a starting pitcher, hit really goddamn well when he wasn’t pitching (.322/.416/.588 with 22 home runs), an...
The Most Interesting And Dominant Baseball Player In The World Plays In Japan
There is a 22-year-old professional baseball player who owns the following 2016 stats: 123 innings pitched, 2.12 ERA, 151 strikeouts. He has also put up these stats this season: 288 at-bats, .326/.425/.611, 22 home runs....
What The Hell, Japan?
All sorts of people throw out first pitches before baseball games. Old guys, dinosaurs, washed rappers—you name it, they’ve done it. But this week, Nippon Professional Baseball—ever the innovators—went and put every quirky MLB first pitch into the toilet with this bizarre, unsettling play-within-a-p...
Brandon Laird Won Free Beer For A Year With This Dinger
Brandon Laird is a 28-year-old infielder who scuffled his way to a .197 average in 53 games for three teams in three years of Major League ball. He’s currently plying his craft in Japan for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, who are now my favorite NPB team because that name rules (the nickname is, s...
Fourth Yomiuri Giants Pitcher Admits To Betting On Baseball
Japan’s professional baseball league was hit by a betting scandal this past fall, when a Nippon Professional Baseball investigation revealed that three pitchers on the Yomiuri Giants had bet on games. Now a fourth pitcher, reliever Kyosuke Takagi, has admitted to betting on games, as well as lying t...
I Can't Stop Watching This Dude Try To Hit A 186-MPH Fastball
Ever wondered what it'd be like to stand in against a big-league hurler? Yeah, this is kinda like that, but if the hurler was, like, a Terminator or something. Here's former Japanese ballplayer Takeshi Yamasaki, trying to get his bat around on a nearly 200-mph fastball (the fun starts at around ...
Japanese Pitcher Throws An Insane Eephus Pitch
This is Kazuhito Tadano, a pitcher for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters of the Japanese Pacific League, uncorking what is likely the purest eephus pitch you will ever see. ...
Myth Busting: Do Japanese Pitchers Really Throw More Strikeouts In MLB?
When the Yankees signed Masahiro Tanaka this winter, there wasn't any real question that they were getting an outstanding pitcher, but no one was really expecting what he's done so far. Through 22 innings, Tanaka has struck out 28 batters, good for 11.5 strikeouts per nine innings pitched (SO/9). Th...
The Red Sox's Best Reliever Once Aspired To Be A Gym Teacher
Koji Uehara was, by any measure, the Red Sox's best relief pitcher this season. Indeed, only two Boston starters accumulated a higher WAR than Uehara, who finished the regular season with a 1.09 ERA in 74.1 innings pitched—mostly as the third-string closer after injuries to Joel Hanrahan and Andrew...
Gahhh! Japanese Baseball Is Terrifying, Reports Hiroki Kuroda
That smiling man up there is Hiroki Kuroda of the New York Yankees. Kuroda's first season in the American League has been a good one—he's got a 134 ERA+ in 16 starts heading into the all-star break. So he has good reason to smile now. But he didn't, way back when, writes David Waldstein in the New Y...
Last Night's Winner: The Greatest Hitter In Japanese History, This Ginger Kid
In sports, everyone is a winner-some people just win better than others. Like Japan's new all-time single-season hits leader, Matt Murton. Yes, the same Matt Murton who washed out in Chicago, Oakland and Colorado....
Spider-Man 2: Yet Another Japanese Outfielder Makes Incredible Catch
Mere weeks after introducing the world to the original Spider-Man's home run saving grab, it happens again. Same ballpark, same teams, same pitcher on the mound....