Friday Foto: Somewhere Over The Bullpen

I swear, I've been working on my Yokohama pictures from Sept 16th for three days now and I'm still not quite done. It was such a beautiful Saturday afternoon that I literally took 500 pictures; I've cropped and resized that set down to 130; now I just need to cull out a few more pictures and then label and thumbnail and... yeah. I'm hoping to finish them up tomorrow night before I head off to Microsoft Puzzle Hunt for the weekend, since I'll have few remaining functioning braincells after that.

So instead, I dug into my archives and found a game that I'd never really posted many of my pictures from. August 8th, 2006, against the Devil Rays, I was sitting in Row 1 in the left field bleachers experimenting with my zoom lens, but in the end the more fun pictures came from looking straight downwards:


Put me in coach, I'm ready to play!
George Sherrill did infact go into the game shortly after this picture was taken, and pitched well, but the Mariners didn't bother winning the game until the tenth inning when Devil Rays Secret Weapon Seth McClung came in to give up a grand slam to Big Richie.

Kei Igawa Linkage

Kei Igawa pulled off a stealth wedding, just like Theo Epstein! Woohoo! (This seems a lot more impressive to me due to the Japanese press, although I'm sure the Boston press is almost as bad. You can read Igawa's blog entry here.)

New Yankees pitcher Igawa gets married [Mainichi Shinbun]

Igawa said he announced his marriage only after he came to the United States because he wanted to avoid causing her and her acquaintances any trouble in Japan.

Funny article about how Matsuzaka and Igawa will adjust to pitching in America, with input from various "experts", anywhere from Robert Whiting to Trey Hillman to Jeremy Powell:

Dice-K or just plain Kei? [Asahi Herald]

"Igawa most definitely has major-league stuff for a left-hander and will fare better than most predict because he has a whole lot of heart. He is an extremely hard worker with great confidence in himself and will do anything to succeed in MLB, which is what it takes to be a winner in a place like New York.

I'm thinking 10-plus wins and a shorter haircut for his first season." -- Jeff Williams, Hanshin Tigers pitcher

Oh yeah, and he's already in Tampa and doing early training, getting adjusted to America. But I have to wonder exactly WHICH words Derek Jeter is teaching him?

Igawa Gets Early Start to Spring [New York Post]

"It's all a feel for him, getting to know the guys," Connors said. "Jeter has been already kidding him . . . teaching him a new word every day. He's going to be fine. It just takes the time to get adjusted."

The Projection of Big Richie

For info about the LL/USSM projection project, see here. (Richie projection discussion is here).
For the tune to this post, see the appropriate commercial here.


The Projection Of Big Richie

He'll bring a ten foot pole to the batter's box
And hit a full fifty-seven knocks
Actually, I put 38.
(Big Richie!)

He'll drive in a hundred runs or more
And ninety times he'll see ball four!
Uh... I'm betting on 50.
(Big Richie!)

We'll have to guess
At his OPS
And his strikeout count?
[SWOOSH!]
We hope it's less.
Who the hell does he think he is? Adam Dunn?
(Big Richiiiieeeee... Big Richiiiieeeee...)

Japan Photos, Part 9: Seibu Dome, revisited

I wasn't originally going to make a photo set for this day since it wasn't even a game I'd originally intended to see. I'd already gone to see both the Lions and Buffaloes in their home stadiums, both playing the Fighters -- and I've posted the photo sets from those days already, even (check out the trip pictures tag) -- but when looking through the pictures I took that night, I realized I got a whole bunch of semi-decent pictures of players, so I might as well crop them and put them up anyway.

So, these are from September 15th. It was a Friday night, I couldn't get in touch with any of my friends to hang out, so I took the train back out to Tokorozawa for some baseball. Looking back at the box score for the game, only 10,000 people were there. ON A FRIDAY NIGHT IN THE MIDST OF THE PENNANT RACE! What's even crazier is that I got a seat in the second row, in the infield, right by third base -- and then decided to move BACK to the 22nd row so I could take pictures over the fence. Here's my blog entry from that day.

And yeah, this was the day of the infamous bunt heard round the world that I wrote about later on. I still think of Toru Hosokawa every time I see a reference to enka singer Kiyoshi Hikawa, too. Funny that.

I also got to see current Phillies NRI Karim Garcia strike out twice and hit a home run that day. Whee!

Full photoset with thumbnails and descriptions here:
Lions vs. Buffaloes at the Seibu Invoice Dome, September 15, 2006

And of course I'll put up a few thumbnails here. I think the theme of this set was either "Hiroyuki Nakajima talks too much" or "Leave it to Liefer".

Wide field view, final game score, little leaguers gather pre-game:


Orix fans in left, Lions fans in right, Lions players bow to the fans after winning:


Toru Hosokawa bunts, Karim Garcia swings, Yasunari Takagi pitches:


Meiji vendor peddles candy, Alex Cabrera's post-HR lion doll, Jeff Liefer is game hero:


Lions starter Matsunaga, Orix starter Hirano, Ming-Chieh Hsu, Minoru Yamagishi, Lions closer Chikara Onodera:


Alex Cabrera, Kazuhiro Wada, Shogo Akada, Eiji Mizuguchi, and Hiroyuki Nakajima talking gloves with Hsu:


Tea vendor, Lions mascot, ball girl, Lions cheer chicks, indoor post-game fireworks:


The Seibu Dome at night is a really frustrating place to shoot, and I ended up experimenting with taking shots at ISO 800 and 1600. Unfortunately, this meant that I got less blurry shots in a lot of cases, but they were so grainy they still looked kind of bad. I really need a low-light zoom, but I sort of can't afford one right now...

A Case of the Mondays

I meant to have some more Japan trip pictures up today, but alas, I got sidetracked yesterday by going to a Super Bull party. Right after that crazy kickoff where the Bears returned it for a touchdown, two more people showed up, so we rewound it on the Tivo before they got downstairs and were like, "Okay, let's all pretend we just started watching," except that when the announcer said something like "The Colts have had some problems blocking their kickoff returns this year," we all lost it and started cracking up.

Peyton Manning is kind of cute, but other than that, I don't recall much from the game besides all of the rain and the ninety billion fumbles and turnovers, which were entertaining on their own. I brought my Terrible Towel with me, as did another Pittsburgh ex-pat, and so whenever anyone came in to check on the game and asked who was winning, she and I would yell "GO STEELERS!!!!" and wave our towels around. I also did a cheer of "E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!!!!!" at one point.

Yeah, see, everything I know about football I learned from marching band. (Before you ask: baritone/euphonium.)

Anyway, the 2007 Community Projections have been kicked off today, and the first one we're attacking is Kenji Johjima. If you somehow read this blog but not Lookout Landing or USSM, read this post to find out more. It's a joint effort between the two blogs this year, in Google Spreadsheets, which is a somewhat surreal experience, as you can sit there and watch other people play with the numbers.

Let's see, what else is up...

Last week the Japanese newspapers were reporting that the NPB is adopting drug testing measures. The penalties may seem light (first offense is a reprimand, second is a 10-day suspension, third is a year, fourth is indefinite) but when you remember that in Japanese society, nobody ever forgets any dishonor to your name -- think Kazuhito Tadano -- a reprimand and the subsequent media circus could be more punishment than you think.

Thanks to Gary Garland starting up his news translations at Japan Baseball Daily again, I feel myself getting sort of lazy, but we'll see. The one wacky thing to me is that he pointed out two new catchers who are being compared to Kenji Johjima, the new Softbank catcher Hiroaki Takaya, and the Chunichi high school catcher Nagamasa Fukuda. However, from my own observation during the Koshien tournament and the Kokoyakyu movie, the one I would most expect to put up Johjima numbers in the future is the Hanshin Tigers draftee Ryohei Hashimoto, from Chiben Wakayama HS. He has a beautifully powerful swing, and it's just a matter of whether he can get his game up to the top level in time to take over for the aging Akihiro Yano, I think (but I also hope they don't rush him like the Lions did with Ginjiro Sumitani last year).

Bobby Valentine mentioned in his blog that Bobby Buckner is at spring training with Lotte. Yes, he is related to Bill Buckner -- it's his son, a high school senior who plays shortstop. Apparently Valentine was college roomates with Buckner, too. Small world!

Speaking of spring training with Lotte, it is apparently so damn hot in Australia right now -- around 100 degrees -- that their practices were moved to 4pm from 10am. My favorite submarine pitcher Shunsuke Watanabe is blogging about it on his website, although to be fair, he's mostly using the hot weather as an excuse to drink lots of Australian beer and wine. Can you blame him?

Speaking of weird spring training food stories, there were some funny recent Hawks pictures in Miyazaki, including Sadaharu Oh receiving a seafood gift (that katsuo fish is like half his height), and the Hawks rookies are learning to make hot dogs? And this is not about food, but Hiroki Kokubo is in ur trenchcoatz stalking ur rookiez. Okay, not really.

Also, I dislike the new Hanshin uniforms, though I think this picture of Fujikawa saying "You got my old number!" to Esteban Yan is pretty funny. And look, it is Ryan Vogelsong.

The Hiroshima Carp have been covering a different player in camp each day for photos. So far they've done Soyogi, Higashide, Arai, and Kurihara. Kurihara says he's going to hit like 40-50 home runs this season. I have no doubt he could do it if he stayed healthy for the whole year. I want to get excited about the Carp this year, I honestly do, but I worry that doing so will jinx them.

I feel kind of bad for Mike Matheny retiring, but alas, these things happen. If his case study helps to prevent and/or treat head trauma and concussions from catchers in the future, though, at least he'll be able to make some impact on the sport, no pun intended.

You know we're big George Sherrill fans around here, and I never did link to his recent article on mlbplayers.com about perseverance and working your way up out of the indy leagues. It's an interesting read.

And on another lefty bullpen note, happy 22nd birthday to Eric O'Flaherty! I'm betting his birthday wish is to break camp with the Mariners this year...

Friday Foto: Mariners in Cooperstown

This post was inspired by a misunderstanding in a recent USS Mariner daily thread. Someone saw a recent Mariners Around the Horn article, and saw the lines "There was a point last August [in 2006] when the Mariners were the lone team in the Major Leagues to have used the same five starting pitchers all season. Say what you want about the combined production Jamie Moyer, Jarrod Washburn, Joel Pineiro, Felix Hernandez and Gil Meche gave the Mariners..." and got them confused with the Mariners 2003 rotation, because we didn't have Felix or J-Rod back then.

See, in 2003, the team managed to use the same five pitchers to start every single game -- Moyer, Garcia, Pineiro, Meche, and Franklin. As it turns out, apparently the only other teams to do this since 1900 were the 1904 Red Sox and the 1966 Dodgers.

Of course, as far as I can tell, the 1904 Sox only HAD five pitchers, anchored by Cy Young (41 starts, 26-16, 1.97 ERA, 380 IP, 29 BB, 200 K). The 1966 Dodgers were anchored by Sandy Koufax (41 starts, 27-9, 1.73 ERA, 323 IP, 77 BB, 317 K), who of course won the Cy Young award that year, and retired after that season. The 2003 Mariners, on the other hand, were anchored by... Jamie Moyer (33 starts, 21-7, 3.27 ERA, 215 IP, 66 BB, 129 K), who... became the oldest guy to ever play in his first All-Star game that year at the young age of 40. (Satchel Paige was voted into his first All-Star Game in 1952 at the age of 46, but didn't play.) Jamie, of course, has no intention of retiring until after he turns 50, though, as an aside, if he's still pitching past the end of May 2007, will be older than Cy Young was in his last game. He'll probably be throwing the ball about as fast, too.

Sadly, this might be one of the few times I can find a good excuse to put Cy Young, Sandy Koufax, and Jamie Moyer all in the same paragraph.

Anyway, this is a Foto post. Honest:


From the 2003 events display at Cooperstown.

If it's fuzzy, the description reads:

"This ball was signed by Seattle pitchers Ryan Franklin, Freddy Garcia, Gil Meche, Jamie Moyer and Joel Pineiro, who in 2003 became the first starting rotation in 37 years to remain intact and start every one of their team's games. The only 20th century teams to accomplish this feat were the 1966 Dodgers and the 1904 Red Sox."

I've been to Cooperstown twice, once in 1989 and once in 2003, but I haven't really put a lot of the pictures I took online, mostly because they really suck. Also, on said latter trip, the place was still under construction, so there wasn't as much to see anyway. Either way, there were a few other neat Mariners items there, like a ball that Shiggy pitched to Ichiro in 2001 which was the first Japanese-Japanese pitcher-batter matchup in the MLB, a bat used by Bret Boone when he hit his 33rd home run of 2001 and broke the AL record for HRs by a second baseman, a hat and ball from John Halama when he threw a perfect game for the Tacoma Rainiers on July 7 2001, and bats from both Bret Boone and Mike Cameron from May 2, 2002, where they became the first teammates to hit back-to-back home runs TWICE in the first inning, as well as Cameron hitting four home runs in four consecutive at-bats. Wow. Or maybe I should say, "My oh my!"

Anyway, say what you want about Franklin, Meche, and Pineiro, but they are, in their own special way, in Cooperstown.

(EDIT: In CRAZY COINCIDENCE land, Jim Parque, who gave up three out of the four home runs to Mike Cameron that day, has just signed a minor league and NRI deal with the Mariners. My gosh, I must be psychic.)

Baseball-reference survey and attendance categorization

I can't imagine there's anyone who reads this blog who isn't familiar with baseball-reference.com, but they are currently doing a survey to find out what features of the site people do and don't like, and what they should work on next, and such.

If you're one of the first 1500 people to take the survey, you'll get credited with $2 towards sponsoring a page, which means you could either sponsor some completely obscure player, or put it towards sponsoring a page normally. (I currently sponsor 11 players on b-ref. 10 are easily identifiable and the 11th is Doyle. Though, recently I'm thinking I should just subscribe to their Play Index service rather than sponsoring pages.)

Anyway, one of the questions in the survey was:

How many major and minor league baseball games per year do you go to?
a. 0
b. 1-3
c. 4-10
d. 11-500

Ummmmmmmmmmm.

500 games a year? Is that even possible? Even given the span of about 180 days that the baseball season covers, if you somehow went to 2 games per day, that'd still be 360, and you could maaaaaybe add in winter leagues to pad that number a bit more. But is there actually a locale where you could reasonably live and do that all year round? Are there even enough weekday afternoon games? I was dead tired after just going to two games in one day in Osaka, and besides doubleheaders, I've never done it over here. I'm pretty sure MLB scheduling tries to make it such that two major league teams in the same metro area are never in town at the same time anyway, although you could always drive between close cities such as Philly and NYC or DC, and/or attend minor league games.

As you can guess, I fit into that last category easily, but still. I'm sort of surprised that those are the delimiters. I would have put it at something like 0, 1-5, 6-20, and 21+, maybe. 1-5 is definitely in the range of "I go when my company or my friends give me tickets", 6-20 is in the range of "I go pretty often, I might even share a season ticket plan or have one of the limited ones", and then 21+ is "I have season tickets / I'm addicted to baseball / I'm stalking Chase Utley" territory.

I'm sort of curious, though -- what do other people see as the boundaries there? I really don't know what normal baseball attendance is -- when I was a kid I went to around 15 games a year, when I was in college I went to around 4 games a year, when I moved to Seattle I started going to 30+ games a year. My guess is that I'm on the high end, but I'm still stymied by "11-500".

Happy Hichori Morimoto Day!

Okay, technically in Japan his birthday was yesterday, not today, but... and by yesterday I mean January 31st, which is about to become yesterday over here as well, but anyway. Spring training has started in Japan, and Hichori Morimoto, the new clown prince centerfielder of the Nippon Ham Fighters, feels it is necessary to start his own legacy of goofballness.

After all, in the last three years when Shinjo was on the team, the Fighters had a large welcoming party to greet them at the airport when they came to spring training. In 2004, Shinjo's first year back in Japan, 500 fans greeted them. In 2005, 300 fans greeted them. Last year, 150 fans greeted them. This year, despite the team winning the Japan Series, only 50 fans and about 50 media folks showed up to meet the team when they came into the airport, which might indicate that Shinjo's fanbase pull was even more than we thought.

It's sort of sad, because Hichori definitely has the attitude, the talent, and the creativity to become the new team goofball. But what he doesn't have is the good looks and rock star charisma that Shinjo does.

Anyway, on Wednesday, Hichori announced that he was going to kick off his new "Gekidan Hichori" act with a big surprise on Thursday. This in itself is pretty funny -- if you don't know, there's a Japanese comedian whose stage name is Gekidan Hitori, a name which basically means "a one-man show". (I'm a pretty big fan of his, having seen him in several shows. Incidentally, his birthday is Feb 2, which starts in a few hours in Japan. But I digress.) So the new "Hichori Show" is, of course, to follow up the "Shinjo Theater" that preceded him.

So on Thursday, when Hichori showed up at camp, he was wearing his new uniform number #1, which he inherited from Shinjo. Only he wasn't wearing it on a uniform... he had pasted it directly on his back. So he paraded around camp for a while, shirtless, wearing his new uniform number on his actual back, as his teammates all cracked up.

Now I just have to hope Hichori performs as well at the plate as he does in his comedy acts.

(If you have forgotten who Hichori Morimoto is, most people on this side of the Pacific know him as the dude who dressed up as an alien at last year's NPB All-Star game. But to us Fighters fans, he was our speedy leadoff man who led the team in runs scored, both during the normal season and in the postseason. His smart baserunning won the PL playoffs for the Fighters and he scored 6 of the 20 runs the team scored during the Japan Series. He's also funny-looking and has a funny-spelled name and is a pretty funny guy in general. And yeah, Hichori is his first name, but his last name is so common and his first name so uncommon that it makes more sense to refer to him by it. Unlike certain middle infielders for Lotte I could name. But anyway. Happy birthday, Hichori!)

My brain is exploding from trying to read all of the Japanese spring training stuff. So, as usual... more later!