Yuya Kamada (no. 20) has replaced Masao Kida in the bullpen as of today.
Kamada made three appearances and pitched a total of four innings without surrendering a run, but he was dropped to the farm team a couple of months ago.
The 30-year-old right-handed pitcher from Akita prefecture has several years of first team experience and has pitched as both a starter and middle reliever in the past.
His personal website can be found here.
Kida, on the other hand, has survived on the top team despite sporting a 5.74 ERA in his 25 appearances for the first team. He began the season as a starter but was quickly moved into the bullpen where he has spent most of 2009.
Hopefully Kamada can take some of the pressure off of our other middle relievers. We may be seeing Yuya in action very soon if Ichiba or Muranaka has another rocky start. However, there’s no guarantee that he’ll actually see playing time as evidenced by Yamamoto’s recent fruitless first-team sojourn.
Here’s what the current squad looks like as of August 11th, 2009:
Pitchers: Yoshinori, Lim, Muranaka, Ishikawa, Matsuoka, Yuuki, Hagiwara, Kamada, Ichiba, Lee, Igarashi, Oshimoto
Catchers: Aikawa, Yoneno, Kawamoto
Infielders: Kawshima, D’Antona, Miyamoto, Tanaka, Hatakeyama, Kawabata, Noguchi
Outfielders: Fukuchi, Guiel, Takeuchi, Iihara, Aoki, Nakao
About Christopher Pellegrini
