2007 Pacific LeaguePpredictions

- I'm surprised nobody else started this thread, so I'll get it going. With the Pa-League starting tomorrow, what's everyones predictions?


We've covered this early this pre-season in this thread.

I'll move my predictions over from there:

1.) Softbank Hawks
2.) Nippon Ham Fighters
3.) Chiba Lotte Marines
4.) Seibu Lions
5.) Rakuten Eagles
6.) Orix Buffaloes

Now I also take my comments from that thread over here.

So far I like all of the off-season moves by both Softbank (Kokubo, Nitkowski, Hyzdu, Tamura, and Guttormson) and of Nippon Ham (Green, Glynn, and Sweeney). Plus Nippon Ham's rotation as well as Softbank's both remain strong.

The questions for Nippon Ham are: how much will the loss of Michihiro Ogasawara to Yomiuri, the release of pitching coach Mike Brown, the loss of Okajima to the majors, and yes the retirement of Shinjo hurt Nippon Ham? Though Nippon Ham with Inaba, Green, and Seguignol still are a good hitting lineup. Also their rotation remains strong with Darvish, Yagi, Glynn, and Kanemura.

Can Softbank get over their playoff struggle? Despite the loss of Zuleta, Softbank's lineup remains strong and the young pitching combo combo of Saitoh, Wada, Sugiuchi (who I believe will rebound), Arakaki, and Guttormson. Hopefully Matsunaka will also rebound, being healthy should help that. Hopefully he doesn't get pitched around too much and Kokubo, Buchanan, and Tamura will help(which I believe they will).

As for Chiba Lotte, I believe Zuleta will help strenghten their lineup, and that Benny will also do better in 2007. I believe their starters will improve, as they don't have the wear and tear of the WBC. Plus, I believe Satozaki and Imae should rebound. Also, I believe that Nishioka and Fukuura can only get better.

Seibu, what they do with the $51.1 million is key. Though I'm concerned in how much the loss of Matsuzaka will hurt Seibu and their rotation.

Rakuten, who I'm rooting for, I'm just afraid got worse with the loss of Glynn. Though I hope Iwakuma can rebound from injury to his days with Kintetsu. Also, Ichiba looked great in 2006 and should only get better. I also like the fact that Rakuten is investing a lot of time into signing players out of Taiwan and the signing of Witt. Along with Fernandez and Short they make a good tandem. Also others like Takasu, Teppei, and Fukumori hopefully will continue to improve. Finally, I feel with Nomura (who some here dislike) that they did improve and mature as a team from their initial year and will only get better.

As for Orix, I like the hiring of Terry Collins as manager, but still they have tons of work before they become contenders. I like the signings of Allen and Carter and the trade that got rid of Tani, but I'm still afraid they have way too much work cut out for them.

I'm surprised you didn't scroll down two pages in the forum and find this exact thread from two months ago where we were making Pacific League predictions.

But yeah, there's a lot of "Hawks first, Eagles not dead last" sentiment going around.

Actually this was going just a bit here.

- I'm surprised you didn't scroll down two pages in the forum and find this exact thread from two months ago where we were making Pacific League predictions

OK, OK, I got it. Didn't really visit this site so much in the off season, work's been crazy, and I didn't realize predictions were made so early! I usually like to watch what goes on early spring and in open-sen.

1) Hawks
2) Marines
3) Buffaloes
4) Lions
5) Figthers
6) Eagles

As for the first 2 teams being no big surprise, my third place team definitely is. First of all I know all you Buffalo haters are surprised to see them in third in my poll, but I will let you in on a little surprise: Pitching.

The last time I checked, good pitching beats good hitting, and the Buffs are going American style under Collins with an old but very good 5 man rotation. Kawagoe, Yoshi, Davey, Serafini, and Hirano. The last time I checked, that's a solid 5. I know the Hawks and Marines have nice rotations but these guys are every bit as good.

Look for Serafini to regain is form from '05 after battling injuries last season as he seems to be healthy now. If this guy stays healthy, look out. Orix can vault over Softbank and Chiba.

If you look at the stats of the other four, they were very good. They were just victimized by bad run support and very bad managing with the Buffaloes. Davey was in the top 5 in ERA in the league and had 10 wins on a very bad Orix team last year.

With the addition of Rhodes, LaRocca, and Ohbiki, as well as bringing some youth into this squad, I would say the offense should improve and the pen has some nice arms as well. They were not very good last year, but now with a manger that knows what hes doing, plus with hard throwers Katoh, Hagawara, and Kaneko, as well as newcomer Carter closing and newcomer veteran Yoshida (from Softbank), this pen should be solid.

So for all you haters that are picking the Eagles ahead of the Buffs, start believing. And what did Rakuten do to improve so much in everybody's eyes? Their pitching is bad and they lost Glynn, although Witt should help the offense a lot. The Fighters have lost too much, and the loss of Matsuzaka will take at least 10 wins away from the Lions.

Just to let you know, the buffaloes are already carrying four gaijin in LaRocca, Allen, Carter, and Davey. So your rotation is one man short. Serafini is odd man out.

- The last time I checked, good pitching beats good hitting, and the Buffs are going American style under Collins with an old but very good 5 man rotation. Kawagoe, Yoshi, Davey, Serafini, and Hirano. The last time I checked, that's a solid 5. I know the Hawks and Marines have nice rotations but these guys are every bit as good.

Yeah good pitching beats good hitting, but unless I'm living in a parallel universe, since when has Orix had a better rotation than the Fighters?

Let's take a look at the Fighters:

Nippon Ham Fighters

Yu Darvish (12-5, 2.89 ERA, 1.28 WHIP, .240 OBA, 64BB/115K, 12 HR, 149.2 IP, 25G/21 GS)
Tomoya Yagi (12-8, 2.48 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, .220 OBA, 51 BB/108K, 12 HR, 170.2 IP, 26G/21GS)
Ryan Glynn (7-7, 3.96 ERA, 1.41 WHIP, .290 OBA, 36BB/121K, 15 HR, 127.1 IP, 21 G/19GS)
Satoru Kanemura (9-6, 4.48 ERA, 1.50 WHIP, .300 OBA, 43 BB/57K, 14 HR, 134.2 IP, 23G/22 GS)

Darvish and Yagi will only get better, Glynn will improve with the run support, and Kanemura only has to do what he did last year.

Switching to Orix, other than Davey and Hirano, none of the starters really stand out or come out at you. Yes what Yoshii is doing is nice, but he's isn't much more than a 5 inning pitcher anymore. Yes Carter's upside is nice, but until I actually see results is when I'll believe whether he can do it or not. Who knows. Thing is Collins has his hands full from years of bad decisions by Orix's front brass.

- With the addition of Rhodes, LaRocca, and Ohbiki ...

The only question there is how healthy will LaRocca stay? He wasn't exactly known for his health while with Yakult and the Carp. Also this lineup just doesn't stand up real well with the likes of the top 3: Softbank, Chiba Lotte, and Nippon Ham.

- The Fighters have lost too much, and the loss of Matsuzaka will take at least 10 wins away from the Lions.

The Fighters lost Ogasawara, I'll grant you that. But they filled that hole with who looks like a good candidate in Andy Green. They also got Glynn and Sweeney. Plus they still have Inaba and Seguignol.

While Seibu lost Matsuzaka, they still have Hideaki Wakui, Fumiya Nishiguchi, Chris Gissell, Alex Graman, and new signee Jason Johnson (who should also help the strain of losing Matsuzaka) and projects better than Orix's rotation, too.

OK, say what you want but I disagree. Both Sebiu and Nippon Ham had better run support from their offense than did Orix last year. With that being said the Orix offense is better and I'm not going to pull the stats out, but Yoshii, Hirano, Davey, and Kawagoe all had very good stats last year. There's nothing they can do about the wins. Also, Serafini was hurt, so look for him to be back to form and win double digits. All 5 of these guys should win at least 10.

We will see come October, so go with your paper champions from last year. This game is played on the field not on paper. Last year is over. It's a new season, and I'll go with the best manager and the best pitching and take Orix over these also-rans. Orix will be in the playoffs, and once they are there, look out!

- ... but Yoshii, Hirano, Davey, and Kawagoe all had very good stats last year.

Except their pitching staff was 8th out of 12 in ERA in all of NPB last year. You're giving them way too much credit than they're worth. Behind Davey and Hirano there is nothing special.

- It's a new season, and I'll go with the best manager and the best pitching and take Orix over these also-rans.

Yeah Orix is something special, they've finished in bottom tier for ages now. They haven't been a top team since 1995-96. What makes them such a pennant contender all of a sudden after 4 straight years of mediocre baseball as the Orix Buffaloes/BlueWave?

Next, nothing against Collins and the group they brought in this year, but they aren't anywhere close to bringing the Buffaloes to the pennant. Orix is a mess. Their management can't buy a clue. Also Rhodes and LaRocca are nice, but alone aren't going to be able to compete with the upper echelon offenses of the PL either. LaRocca is too injury prone and Rhodes can't do it all alone.

As for the Fighters, yeah they have to be doing terrible, yeah they won the Nippon Series last year, yeah doing terrible.

It's not even just the Fighters rotation to keep in mind here. I'm not sure I'm entirely up to date on the Eagles' rotation, but Iwakuma and Arime are actually solid pitchers. Ichiba needs to get his act together, and Masahiro Tanaka could play a big part in the season if he out-pitches his hype. A really encouraging outing from Kouji Aoyama the other day also should be bringing hope to Eagles fans. Shingo Matsuzaki was also very good on the farm team last year, and could possibly start contributing at the ichi-gun level as well. And don't forget that Rakuten's also got a reasonably decent closer in Kazuo Fukumori, if they can just get a lead to hand to him.

What I'd be worried about if I was an Eagles fan would be their fielding - that was the biggest thing I noticed when watching the Hawks-Eagles game last night. Fujii would try to throw someone out at second and Okihara would simply not get the ball and the tag.

You know, I tend to agree with the guy. I think that ORIX has made some serious changes this year and that the league is in for a big surprise. I think that this is their year to make the playoffs.

The nice thing about having 2 gaijin in the rotation is that you can just as easily bump them back and forth between ichi- and ni-gun, and even have them both on the ni-gun squad if you want to use all of the other gaijin on a particular day. This works out well for ORIX.

Personally, I think that this is going to be a big break out year for them. That and they are playing more games in Kobe than last year which is nice for me.

Buffalo fan, pints at Ryans on Friday?

Orix is going to make the playoffs if Tuffy and LaRocca keep batting well and stay injury free. As much as I had reservations about Terry Collins, I like his batting order. He has no bias towards certain players, so he can play who he feels is qualified to play. The selection of Ohbiki, Maeda, Sakaguchi, and Abe as regulars is turning out to be a very smart move. That starting rotation will have to keep up their hard work.

I think it's going to be Softbank, Lotte, and Orix in the playoffs this year. Nippon Ham just doesn't have the bats this year. I didn't like Lotte at all for the first couple games, but I saw flashes of the Marine Gun attack of 2005 against Seibu.

As for Softbank, I think Matsunaka is going to continue to struggle hitting for power like he used to. His hits are all hard liners with no arch. I think Tamura will have a career year if he stays healthy. Softbank will also have four legit Sawamura candidates eating up innings all season long.

I think Rakuten is going to be bad as always. That defense is terrible. On the bright side, I think Teppei is truly going to emerge as a star. Chunichi is going to regret the day they just gave him up to Rakuten, especially when Fukudome leaves.

Re Buffaloes. I'll believe it when I see it.