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Opening Weekend Notes

NPB Tracker Archives

Opening Weekend Notes

by Patrick Newman (Mar 30, 2010)

Alright, so NPB is officially in season... here are some observations from the games this weekend:

  • Yu Darvish looked better this weekend against the Marines than he did last weekend, at least in the parts of the game I was able to see. He definitely had his good slider. Darvish also came up with a new pitch called the "one-seam", but I have no idea if he used it in the Marines game.
  • Shunsuke Watanabe's pitching seems to have gotten slower, unbelievably.
  • The game I spent the most time with was Sunday's matchup of Rakuten vs Seibu. Seibu's Kazuyuki Hoashi doesn't have great velocity, but was sharp with all his pitches, and commanded the strike zone well. Of course, it didn't hurt that he got to face Todd Linden three times. Masahiro Tanaka went home with the win, though he was a little less impressive than usual. It was freezing cold (it started snowing at one point) and the ball wasn't carrying, so a couple of long fly balls he gave up turned into outs and not home runs. Dee Brown has looked terrible every time I've seen him this year.
  • Hanshin's two import bats are off to hot starts. Through Tuesday's action, Matt Murton is hitting .500 (8/16) and Kenji Johjima is at .389 with 5 rbi.
  • Orix is a surprising 6-1 so far this season.

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