Wednesday, March 01, 2006

WBC Japan pitching heads-up

Of course this isn't set in stone, and maybe Sadaharu Oh's just trying to mess with everyone's mind, but for the Japanese games this weekend, the news has been talking about the starters as being:

Friday March 3: Japan vs. China - Japan starter: Koji Uehara
(this game is on at 1:30am Friday morning, Pacific time)

Saturday March 4: Japan vs. Taipei - Japan starter: Daisuke Matsuzaka
(this game is on at 1am Saturday morning, Pacific time)

Sunday March 5: Japan vs. Korea - Japan starter: Shunsuke Watanabe
(this game is on at 1am Sunday morning, Pacific time)

While I know that most of you guys have probably heard a ton about Matsuzaka, and even Uehara has gotten himself into a decent amount of press with the MLB-NPB all-star games, I really think the most interesting of the three starting pitchers is Shunsuke Watanabe, a submarine pitcher who led the Chiba Lotte Marines to the Japan Series championship and the Konami Cup championship. He's really fun to watch. Also, in my completely biased opinion, I think the Korean team will be the most difficult challenge for the Japan team, so that also makes it a really interesting interesting game to watch.

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