2004 in Review

I've got a paper due for the SABR Asian Baseball Committe that I'd like to run by you before I submit it. It's a review of the 2004 season, and the target audience is SABR members who don't necessarily follow baseball outside of North America. With that in mind, I'd like to hear your opinions on the piece. Will such a target audience get lost? And most importantly, did I get my facts straight?
Aka pen sensei, yoroshiku onegai shimasu.

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Nippon Professional Baseball 2004

Professional baseball in Japan turned 70 years old this year. The season started off with a number of new managers, the return of a fan favorite manager, a new playoff system in the Pacific League, and the general hope for all teams. Then, just before the All-Star break, a merger was announced and the baseball world in Japan turned upside down. What followed was an offer to buy the team, the godfather of NPB saying he'd never let in such an owner, and the players threatening and going through with the first strike in Japanese baseball history. Once that controversy died down, said godfather resigned taking responsibility for under-the-table money to a college prospect. (Two other owners took the same fall after the season ended.) The season ended in a neck-and-neck run for the third play-off spot in the Pacific League, an exciting play-off series, and seven games to conclude the Nippon Series. Finally, two teams went on the selling block, one was sold, and the future of baseball in Japan has become as unsure as it has exciting in this turmoil of a season.

Managers

There were a number of managerial changes this year. Tsutomu Itoh taking over for "Mr. Third Base Coach" Haruki Ihara to lead the Seibu Lions was the least surprising appointment. Seibu's owner, Yoshiki Tsutsumi, had been trying to convince the veteran backstop to retire and take the helm for a couple of years now, and Itoh finally decided to hang up the spikes after the 2003 season. Itoh took the Lions all the way to the Nippon Series this year, taking the position of Nippon Ichi (#1 in Japan) in seven games.

The defending Japan champion Hanshin Tigers announced farm coach Akinobu Okada as their manager as Senichi Hoshino, who managed the team to their first championship since 1985, retired due to health concerns and became Special Director for the club. Okada had worked with a lot of the young Tigers on the farm for a number of years, the Tiger pups doing exceptionally well in the Western League while Okada has been there. His experience on the farm didn't help him much at the top level, however, as many fans ended the season severely disappointed with Okada's handling of his pitchers and young talent. Of course, going from first to fourth will do that with fans.

The Chunichi Dragons weren't satisfied with Hisashi Yamada's two years in charge and went with former Dragon and three time Triple Crown winner Hiromitsu Ochiai. "Ore ryu" or "my pace/flow" was a saying often used with Ochiai as a player. He did things his way, at his pace. With the Dragons, the "ryu" was transformed into the charcter for "dragon" to become a bit of a play on words (though it may be lost in translation). What Ochiai did with his team was teach them to think for themselves, become self disciplined. Instead of controlling every aspect of the game, he let his players do what they needed to do to win. And they did. While the race in the Central League was fairly close, Chunichi had a firm grip on it the whole way. It was an exciting Nippon Series, but the Dragons came up just a little short. Still, a very good first year.

2003 manager Tatunori Hara and Yomiuri Giant Tsuneo Watanabe had a falling out at the end of the 2003 season, sending Hara packing. When Tsuneo Horiuchi was announced as the new manager for the Giants in 2004, all of the remaining coaching staff turned in their resignation. Horiuchi is one of those guys you either love or hate, and fairly young staff under Hara saw a sharp rise in the average age under Horiuchi. A former pitcher who went from Koshien (annual high school tournament) star to Rookie of the Year in 1966, retiring in 1985, Horiuchi inherited the most powerful lineup in Japan, able to line up power hitters from the number three to number eight slots in the order. Yet, with the most powerful and expensive lineup in NPB, he could barely manage a third place finish.

[Added on December 12]
While not his first season, Trey Hillman let the Nippon Ham Fighters to their first full season in Sapporo Dome, concluding the season in third place and in the Pacific League play-offs (see below for more details). In 2003, Hillman spent a great deal of time off the field going to various societies and club functions, meeting with house wives and the elderly. It was odd to have a foreign manager doing all of these public relations functions when a popular star like Michihiro Ogasawara was considered to be the "face of the Fighters." If Hillman laid a successful Phase One foundation in Hokkaido, the acquisition of Shinjo returning to Japan from the Majors became Phase Two of the Fighters' Sapporo PR blitz. Shinjo proved to be even more effective as the "face of the Fighters" than Ogasawara, and the Fighters saw a 22.5% rise in attendance compared to sharing Tokyo Dome with the Giants.

Finally, there was the return of Bobby Valentine to Chiba Marine. After taking the Chiba Lotte Marines from being a "forever B-Class team" (A-Class is the top three teams, B-Class the bottom three in the six team leagues) to second place in 1985 1995, Bobby and then general manager Tatsuro Hirooka had a bit of a disagreement that couldn't be overcome, and Valentine's two year deal was cut in half. The players protested, signed petitions to get Bobby back, but Lotte owner, Takao Shigemitsu, even after firing Hirooka a year later, continued to ignore the fans' pleas to bring Bobby back - until this year. He presented Valentine with full control over the team, which he didn't have under Hirooka, and Bobby came back. Although they finished the season right at .500 and a half game in fourth place, just missing a play-off spot, Lotte reported the highest attendance ever for the club at 1,596,000, up 33% from the previous year. While the team was in its hardest losing streak in May (they only won six games that month), Bobby had the window to his office open and was signing autographs for the fans who came out to rain cancelled games. He would join the team to bow in apology to the right field fans after a loss. With the fan support Bobby has in Chiba, it'll be hard to see him go when his contract expires.

Crisis

June 13, 2004 was the day that started a side show to Pro Yakyu that lasted through to the end of the season. The Orix BlueWave and Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes announced that they were going to merge. Four days later (June 17), a representative of the Seibu Lions, after talks with Yomiuri Giant owner Tsuneo Watanabe, announced that Nippon Professional Baseball was moving towards a single league setup. This set off a chain reaction that the owners didn't count on, fans and players alike got together in protest to say "no" to contraction.

With protesting fans at ball games and the Players' Association sending them legal notices of objection to their plans, Takafumi Horie, the owner of Internet portal and blog Livedoor, offered to purchase the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes on June 30 to solve both the problem of Kintetsu's dept bleeding red ink and the players not wanting to lose a team (or 70+ jobs). To the entire baseball community, this looked like the most reasonable way out of the crisis. However, Kintetsu's owner refused to even talk with president Horie, and Giants' owner Watanabe basically said that Horie would join NPB over his dead body. Neither knew what to make of a self-made Internet millionaire who wore black T-shirts to official meetings, and was never seen with a necktie.

The owners basically blocked Horie out of their collective consciousness and went forward by announcing that, in order to merge into a single league, another two teams would have to merge. From the Owners' Meeting on July 8 until the Owners' Meeting on September 8, the owners worked hard to get a second merger through so that they could form a single league in 2005. Rumors of the Chiba Lotte Marines merging with the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks were numerous, with fans gathering signatures and holding up banners protesting such a merger at not only Chiba and Fukuoka, but all the stadiums around the country. Seibu's owner, Yoshiki Tsutsumi, stated to the press a number of times that a second merger was on the verge of being agreed upon, but it never came to be.

The day after the owners officially approved the merger of Orix and Kintetsu, they met with player representatives to discuss something unheard of in Japan, a player strike. As the owners steadfastly ignored Horie's offer, the fans' protest, and the players' requests for more information as to why a merger was necessary, the players came to the conclusion that the only way to get the owners' attention would be to strike. With over 90% fan approval for a strike in most polls, the players marked September 9 at 5:00 p.m. as the deadline for the owners to guarantee that there will still be 12 teams playing in 2005 or they would walk out for every weekend (they were concerned with venders and other personnel being hit hard if they did a full time strike) until the end of the season. Talks went well beyond 5:00, and they continued the next day before scheduled games as well. They didn't reach an agreement, but Atsuya Furuta, the all-star catcher for the Yakult Swallows and chairman of the Players' Association, felt that negotiations were going well enough to postpone the strike another week.

The players and owners met again on September 16 and 17. Since the previous meetings, it was made clear that the owners were talking about allowing new teams after 2005, the players refused anything short of adding a new team for 2005. It seems that the owners didn't really think that the players would go through with it, but they did. September 18 and 19 saw the first strike in Nippon Professional Baseball history, with the full backing of the fans. On September 22 and 23 the owners conceded to the players' seven demands, including a guarantee that a team would be selected to enter NPB for 2005, and a second weekend of strike was averted.

Pacific League Play-Offs

To make things a little more exciting down the home stretch, the Pacific League implemented a new play-off system this year. They'd done split seasons in the 1970s and '80s with the winners of the two seasons meeting for a play-off, but this one was different. The three teams who finished in "A-Class" (the top three teams in the league) were to qualify for the playoffs. First, the second and third place teams were to play a best two out of three games (first to two wins), then the winner of "Stage One" goes on to "Stage Two" to take on the team with the highest winning percentage in the league in a best three out of five. To add incentives to finish as close to first as possible, if the challenger in Stage Two finished more than five games out of first place, the first place team gets an automatic win to start the round.

Going into the last week of the season, the Chiba Lotte Marines and Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters were battling it out for third place, one unable to get more than a game ahead of the other, flip-flopping in the standings almost daily. With the fate of the two games lost to the strike still up in the air, either team had a big chance. Then, on September 24, the Fighters defeated the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks to clinch the third and final play-off spot, should the games not be made up. The owners didn't appear to want another confrontation with the players, and the standings were set. After the final game was played on September 27, the standings stood:

  Team         G   W  L T  W%   GB
1 Daiei       133 77 52 4 .597   -
2 Seibu       133 74 58 1 .561  4.5
3 Nippon Ham  133 66 65 2 .504 12
4 Lotte       133 65 65 3 .500 12.5
5 Kintetsu    133 61 70 2 .466 17
6 Orix        133 49 82 2 .374 29

While the Chunichi Dragons were still trying to clinch the Central League on October 1st, Stage One of the Pacific League play-offs began with the Seibu Lions hosting the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters. The first game was a high powered see-saw battle with the Lions winning 10-7. With a 5-1 lead going into the bottom of the nineth ninth in the second game, the Lions came to within one, but lost the thriller 5-4. Then, in the third and decisive game, the Fighters found themselves down 3-5 going to the nineth ninth inning. Yet, that didn't stop them. They'd fought hard for the play-off spot in the last couple of weeks of the season, they were determined not to go down easilly. But Toyoda failed to hold the Fighters, allowing a two run home run to Kimoto to tie the game. However, in the bottom of the nineth ninth, Wada steps in and hits a sayonara home run to send the Fighters back to Hokkaido to plan for next year. Seibu moves on to Stage Two.

Anyone who thought that the three games of Stage One were exciting were in store for another round in Stage Two. The first two games were blow-outs, with the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks taking the first 9-3 and the Seibu Lions taking the second 11-1. The Lions took the third game 6-5 to come within one win of the Pacific League Championship Flag first. In the fourth game, Daiei took a 3-0 lead in the fourth inning and held on to win 4-1, bringing the Second Stage even at two games apiece. Then, for the most exciting game of the play-offs, Daiei scored first with a solo shot by Johjima. Seibu turned the game around with three runs in the sixth. Iguchi brought Daiei to within one with a solo home run. Then the Hawks tied the game with a double, sacrifice, and a base hit in the bottom of the nineth ninth inning, sending us to extra innings. In the tenth inning, Seibu retook the lead with a lead-off double, sacrifice bunt, and a sacrifice fly. And that was the difference in the game as the Lions won 4-3 to become the 2004 Pacific League Champions.

When this play-off system was announced at the end of 2003, there were a lot of critics voicing their opinions about how such a system will devalue the season and the Championship. However, SABR member Jim Albright pointed out that the Lions, although they finished the season in second, were really the more deserving team. If you look at the records of the top three teams against their opponents in the league:

               FDH      SL     HNHF    CLM     OKB     OBW  
1 Daiei         -    11 - 14 15(2)10 10(2)15 18 -  9 23 -  4
2 Seibu      14 - 11    -    15 - 12 15(1)11 13 - 14 17 - 10
3 Nippon Ham 10(2)15 12 - 15    -    15 - 12 11 - 14 18 -  9

You will notice that Daiei really beat up on the bottom two teams, the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes and Orix BlueWave. Meanwhile, Daiei actually had a losing record against the second place Lions, Fighters, and fourth place Chiba Lotte Marines, who finished 2nd, 3rd, and 4th respectively. Seibu, on the other hand, had a winning record against all the teams except the fifth place Buffaloes, but that was by just one game. So, arguably, as Albright-san points out, the Seibu Lions really did deserve the Pennant, and this play-off system delivered them the Championship Flag.

Nippon Series

Stage One of the play-offs went the full three games. Stage Two went the full five games. So it was inevitable that the Nippon Series would take the full seven games to complete.

Seibu took Game One by a score of 2-0. Both Kenshin Kawakami and Takashi Ishii threw great games. With the exception of a 49 minute delay over a call in the bottom of the fifth inning, the game was a fast paced pitchers' duel. The cause of the 49 minute delay was Seibu's manager Tsutomu Itoh pulling his players off the field after a bad call from the home plate umpire. What happened was that, after Omar Linares led off the bottom of the fifth for the Dragons reaching on an error back to Ishii (who continued to have a no-hitter until the seventh inning), Hiroyuki Watanabe struck out for out number one. Then Motonobu Tanishige hit the ball straight down in front of the plate. The umpire correctly called the ball fair, and Tanishige started up the first base line. Lion catcher, Kosuke Noda, faked a tag on Tanishige, who was out of reach, then fired the ball to second for the force on Linares, the relay to first was in time for what should have retired the side. But while Noda was throwing the ball to second, the home plate umpire called Tanishige out, thinking that Noda had touched him (something that the second base umpire missed at the time). That meant that the play at second had become a touch play, but Linares was not tagged out, the Lions thinking it was a force play. Hiromitsu Ochiai, the Dragons' manager, reminded the umpire crew of this fact, and Linares was called safe at second. Itoh couldn't believe it and refused to allow his players to go back onto the field. The home plate umpire reported over the Nagoya Dome microphone to the fans what the cause was a couple of times, but it wasn't until he said that it was his missed call that caused this whole thing that Itoh sent his players back out there. The next batter fouled out to retire the side yet again.

Game Two had no controversy as the Dragons evened the Series with a big 11-6 victory. While the final was a bit one sided, it was a see-saw game going into the seventh inning when the Dragons exploded for five runs to take a 8-6 lead at the time.

Game Three was yet another high scoring see-saw game that took over four hours to play out. The Lions took this one 10-8. Chunichi has shown how to scorer with speed and base running, Seibu with the long ball. Going into this Series, it was thought that pitching was going to be key, as we had seen in Game One. But it's been all offense for these last two games.

Game Four was cancelled due to Typhoon #23 coming through on Wednesday, October 20. While the Tokyo/Saitama area (where Seibu Dome is located) didn't get hit as hard as Niigata (where thousands were left homeless, including some entire villages), the Series was delayed a day to ensure the safety of the fans. When play resumed the next night, October 21, Chunichi evened the Series at two games to two with another one sided victory, taking this one 8-2. Was this how the Series was going to go? Chunichi winning the one sided ones and Seibu the close matches?

Chunichi took Game Five 6-1 thanks to incredible pitching by Kenshin Kawakami. Kawakami had a perfect game going until catcher Tooru Hosokawa punched a single through the left side with two outs in the bottom of the sixth inning. Hosokawa came around to score the Lions' lone run that inning when Tatsuya Ozeki lined the ball off the top of the right-center field fense.

Heading back to Nagoya Dome for the final two games, the home team Chunichi Dragons had a three games to two lead. That didn't last long, though, as the Lions evened it up at three games apiece by taking Game Six, another close one, winning 4-2. It really looks like the Lions can win them if their close, so it all comes down to Game Seven.

In his second start this Series, the Lions' Ishii pitch six scoreless inning, being relieved in the seventh with a commanding 7-0 lead. In total for the 2004 Nippon Series, Ishii threw 13 scoreless innings, and as the Lions went on to win this one 7-2, he also took the 2004 Nippon Series MVP Award. The Lions became "Nippon Ichi" ("number one in Japan").

Changing of the Guard

On a note that's both somber and cheerful, there will be a huge change over in ownership next year.

Perhaps the only story this year that could out do the strike was that Giants' owner Tsuneo Watanabe stepped down from ownership (really more like being the head chairman than actual "owner") of the Yomiuri Giants on August 13, in the middle of the whole dispute over contraction and merging the leagues into one. The official reason given was to take responsibility over the illegal payments to Meiji University's pitching ace Yasuhiro Ichiba in hopes of having him commit to becoming a Giant next year. It seems that he was given approximately 2,000,000 yen (over 19,500 USD) to cover food and transportation (taxi) charges for his meetings with Giants' scouts. Officially, Watanabe, the most powerful man in Japanese baseball, was taking the "moral responsibility" for the actions of his scouts in a preemptive move before the press heard about the under the table gifts. Unofficially, most "conspiracy theorists" believe that Watanabe was getting so much bad publicity for the way he handled the entire merger and contraction issue from fans, players, and the press (and he's head of one of the largest newspapers in the world!), that he wanted to get out of the spot light to run things. Evidence since his "retirement" shows that Watanabe is still running the show for Yomiuri.

But the Ichiba Scandal doesn't stop there. After the season finished, Hanshin Tigers' owner, Shinjiro Kuma, and Yokohama BayStars owner, Yukio Sunahara, announced their retirements for the same reason, the discovery of large quantities of money being paid to Ichiba to select their respective teams to join. While the amount of money was a digit less than the Giants presented to Ichiba, Watanabe's lead made them feel that they should do the same. Conspiracy theorists have a harder time trying to explain ulterior motives for these owners as they opposed Watanabe's desire to merge into one league and have no reason to play the system from behind the scenes.

Ichiba went on to declare his desire to play for the newly created Sendai Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, who didn't exist at the time these teams were spending money on him, and are believed to have clean hands.

But the retirement of owners didn't end there. Seibu Lions' owner, Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, who had bought the team in 1979 from Crown Lighter and created one of the winningest teams of the 1980s and '90s, stated that he was stepping down due to a stock scandal involving the Seibu Group and its parent company Kokudo Corporation a week before the Nippon Series. If it weren't for the fact that Tsutsumi may be facing criminal charges in the matter, conspiracy theorists may think that he was trying to escape the back-lash of being one of the leading proponents for contraction in the mid-summer controversy. Soon after winning the Nippon Series, Kokudo stated that the Seibu Lions were for sale, but the price was too high and included keeping the team at Seibu Dome. Seibu Dome is located at the end of one of Seibu's train lines, a remote place that doesn't get much traffic that isn't deliberately going to a game. In short, it's an awful location for a team, and even with the Lions' dominance over two decades, they've been unable to draw large crowds out there. If the team is going to be sold, the buyer really needs to be free to move the team to a better location.

Finally, the team who has been giving the Lions the biggest run for their money for the better part of the past decade has been sold. The Fukuoka Daiei Hawks, who have been second in attendance only to the Yomiuri Giants, were sold to Internet conglomerate Softbank. Daiei's department store chain has been suffering greatly from a number of bad investments. Softbank will stay in Fukuoka, which has shown that they can support a team (unlike Tokorozawa, where the Lions play).

Unlike the other owners stepping down due to a scandal of some sort, this change of ownership promises to be a huge plus for Nippon Professional Baseball. Softbank's founder, Masayoshi Son, has committed himself to bringing NPB into the Information Age and has been busy talking with the other owners about creating services on the Internet where not only the Hawks are available for live broadcasts, but games of all 12 teams are. Unlike MLB.com for the Major Leagues, NPB doesn't have a central location for the dissemination of information, and live Internet broadcasts of games are very limited, in both audio and video formats. Son wants to change that.

So, 2005 looks to have a great deal of new blood, and with it, new ideas. There is an excitement about the future of NPB that hasn't been there for decades. The players have asserted their right to be a part of the changes that are to take place - as partners rather than subordinates. After the whirlwind of changes that happened in 2004, it promises to be interesting to see the effects in 2005.

[Added on December 12]
Miscellaneous

With a great deal of fanfare, the Giants' Kazuhiro Kiyohara got his 2,000th career hit on June 4 to join the elite Meikyu-Kai. Team mate Kimiyasu Kudoh joined Kiyohara in the club when he won his 200th career game a couple of months later on August 17. The Meikyu-Kai is composed of Japanese players who have 2,000 career hits, 200 career wins, or 250 career saves between NPB and MLB.

Asian Home Run King Seung-Yeop Lee came from Korea to Chiba with a great deal of hype. The Marines did a great job promoting Lee, Lee getting more press than pretty much anyone other than the returning Bobby Valentine. Yet Lee had a very hard time adjusting, ending with just 14 home runs, 50 RBIs, and a .240 batting average in 100 games.

The Giants added two powerful batters to their already heavily long-ball laden line-up: Tuffy Rhodes from Orix Kintetsu and Hiroki Kokubo from Daiei. From the start of the season, the Giants went 33 consecutive games with at least one home run, the second longest streak in NPB history behind the 1986 Seibu Lions (35 games). Their 259 home runs for the season surpass the 1980 Kintetsu Buffaloes' 239 home runs for the most home runs by a team in a season. The Giants had six players with 20 or more home runs: Tuffy Rhodes (45), Hiroki Kokubo (41), Shinnosuke Abe (33), Yoshinobu Takahashi (30), Roberto Petagine (29), and lead-off batter Toshihisa Nishi (28). Kazuhiro Kiyohara, who only played in 40 games, hit over one home run every four games with 12 on his injury stricken season.

With home runs up on average throughout both leagues, there has been talk about standardizing on a less lively international baseball for next season. As it is, teams may choose from a number of different makers for the baseballs used in their home games. While the reactiveness of all baseballs are tested to fall within specific parameters, some are well known to be more lively than others.

Kintetsu pitching ace Hisashi Iwakuma, currently (as of mid-December 2004) the center of a controversy involving the merged Kintetsu-Orix team, started off the 2004 season winning 12 games in a row. Iwakuma won his only game in March then all four of his games in April to win the Monthly MVP Award for the start of the season. He then won his first four starts in May, finishing the month with a no-decision and his second Monthly MVP Award in a row. In June, Iwakuma won two games and had a pair of no-decisions, then won one more in July before losing his first game of the year on July 20. He went on to finish the season with a 15 and 2 record (.882 winning percentage, ranked 9th in NPB history) in 21 games (158 2/3rds innings pitched) and a 3.01 ERA.

[Edited to reflect corrections on Dec 12, 2004 7:17 PM JST]