An in-depth look at the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, Jingu Stadium, the Central League, and Japanese Pro Baseball
Yakult’s front office announced the signing of Korean lefty Hye-cheon Lee on Thursday. Lee signed a two year deal worth some $800,000. The pitcher, signed from the KBO’s Doosan Bears has a 53W-40L-6S record in his 559 games in Korea, and sports an ERA of 4.16 in his 10 years as a pro. Like the previous Korean aquisition Chang-yong Lim, Lee saw limited [...]
NPB has released the 2009 schedules for all of its teams, as most readers of this site probably know. What that means for us here at the Tsubamegun is that our “Game Results” page will be changed to show 2009 (makes sense, right?), but we’ll hold off on that until after the New Year. We’ve [...]
The Arizona Diamondbacks have reportedly released infielder Jamie D’Antona so that he can pursue a contract with the Tokyo Swallows. The 26-year-old made his major league debut in July of this year and appears, at least according to his recent triple-A numbers, to have some pop in his bat. He went 3-17 with one RBI [...]
Know what’s a heartbreaker? Seeing the Central League MVP and Best Nine announcements and seeing that a third of the Best Nine, the MVP, and the best pitcher in the CL are all Giants, then realizing that that would be true of the Swallows had Tokyo been willing to pay a bit and offer multi-year [...]
While the story of 16-year-old Eri Yoshida being selected by the Kobe 9 Cruise of the young Kansai Independent League has made it around the world by now, I thought I’d take a moment to mention it here. Miss Yoshida’s signing raises more issues than just her sex, which will draw headlines but doesn’t change [...]
The baseball season will draw to a close this weekend with the 2008 Asia Series, pitting the champions of NPB’s Japan Series, KBO’s Korea Series, CPBL’s Taiwan Series, and the CBL champions against one another in a three-day round robin single-game tournament, followed by a one-game championship between the top two teams on Sunday. Sadly, [...]
First of all, our congratulations to the Saitama Seibu Lions for winning their thirteenth Japan Series title and, even more so, for winning that title by beating Yomiuri.
November 9th, 2008 Saitama Seibu Lions 3 Yomiuri Giants 2 (Tokyo Dome) The Saitama Seibu Lions came back from an 0-2 deficit to defeat the Yomiuri Giants in the deciding game seven of the 2008 Japan Series Championship. It was Saitama’s first Japan Series championship since 2004 when it beat the Chunichi Dragons in seven [...]
November 8th, 2008 Saitama Seibu Lions 4 Yomiuri Giants 1 (Tokyo Dome) Well, folks, there’s going to be a game seven.
November 6th, 2008 Yomiuri Giants 7 Saitama Seibu Lions 3 (Seibu Dome) A seventh inning Wakui meltdown was the story of this game. One out into the inning, riding a decent six frames of two-hit, one-run baseball (with six K’s against one walk), the wheels came completely off the Wakui express.
