Spirits are high in Tokyo as the birds recently swept the Yomiuri Giants and took two games from the Chunichi Dragons (one tie).

But the past six games have all been played at Jingu Stadium, and two-thirds of the next nine games will be played away from home.

Here’s the upcoming schedule:

Saturday April 28th (1:30 PM start) vs Hiroshima (Away)
Sunday April 29th (1:30 PM) vs Hiroshima (Away)
Monday April 30th (1:30 PM) vs Hiroshima (Away)

Tuesday May 1st (6 PM) vs Yokohama (Away)
Wednesday May 2nd (6 PM) vs Yokohama (Away)
Thursday May 3rd (2 PM) vs Yokohama (Away)

Friday May 4th (3 PM) vs Hiroshima (Home)
Saturday May 5th (6 PM) vs Hiroshima (Home)
Sunday May 6th (6 PM) vs Hiroshima (Home)

So while you’re planning your schedule around those nine games, make sure to answer the 10 questions in the most recent Tsubamegun Community Opinion Poll. Please vote only once.

Much like our opinion poll from back in January, here’s another one to gauge how the Tokyo faithful are feeling as the 2012 regular season is about to get under way.

This poll is going to stay open for a couple of days. Please vote only once. We’ll summarize the results shortly thereafter.

Miyamoto won the vote for who Tsubamegun want to see playing third.

We posted a poll on the 25th asking you some general questions about the state of affairs with the team. Aoki’s gone, and there are some question marks hanging over the team as spring camp gets under way down in Urasoe, Okinawa.

We here at Tsubamegun tend to see these question marks as opportunities, and the majority of respondents to the poll seemed to agree with us. Not a single voter had the team finishing the 2012 season any lower than fourth place in the Central League.

There were 25 complete responses to the poll, and for your perusal we have laid out the numbers in an easily digestible format.

1. Do you approve of Tokyo’s decision to post Aoki at the end of 2011?

Response	Votes	%
Yes	15	60%
No	6	24%
Undecided	4	16%

2. Who do you want to get the most starts at third base for the Tokyo Swallows this season?

Response	Votes	%
Shinya Miyamoto	13	52%
Tetsuto Yamada	3	12%
Shingo Kawabata	3	12%
Kazuhiro Hatakeyama	2	8%
Ryosuke Morioka	1	4%
Takahiro Araki	0	0%
Other	0	0%
Undecided	3	12%

3. Who do you want to get the most starts at center for the Tokyo Swallows this season?

Response	Votes	%
Tsuyoshi Ueda	14	56%
Yasushi Iihara	3	12%
Kazuki Fukuchi	1	4%
Yuichi Matsumoto	1	4%
Other	1	4%
Undecided	5	20%

4. With the players currently under contract, do you believe that Tokyo can make up for the loss of Aoki’s defense and his 2011 slash line of .292/.358/.360?

Response	Votes	%
Yes	9	36%
No	14	56%
Undecided	2	8%

5. Do you think that the front office made enough moves during the off-season to bolster the starting rotation and bullpen?

Response	Votes	%
Yes	7	28%
No	13	52%
Undecided	5	20%

6. What place to you think the Tokyo Swallows will finish the 2012 regular season in?

Response	Votes	%
Central League Champions	7	28%
2nd place	6	24%
3rd place	6	24%
4th place	6	24%
5th place	0	0%
6th place	0	0%

Interesting responses although not entirely unexpected. Even though it’s an exceedingly small sample size, feel free to offer your interpretations in the comments section below.

Who do you want to get the bulk of the starts at third this year?

**The poll is now closed. Click here to see the results of the vote.

Here’s a poll to keep your mind off of what you should actually be doing at work.

You will be asked for your opinions on topics such as who should get the most starts at third, and whether or not the front office was right in accepting the posting amount for Norichika Aoki.

This poll will remain open until 5PM (EST) Wednesday February 1st (that’s 7AM on Thursday February 2nd here in Japan). We’ll post the results of the poll shortly thereafter.

Please vote only once.

Poll closed.

As you might have guessed, articles covering the postseason were some of the most popular on the site.

Hello 2012, and Happy New Year to everyone out there in Tsubamegun land!

We’d like to welcome you to the new year, and a spring training camp in Okinawa that’s only a month away, by looking back briefly on the most popular posts of last season.

They’re listed here according to page views, and it’s an amusing view into what interested the record number of readers that accessed this site last year.

5. Tokyo vs Yomiuri Game 3 – Climax Series 1st Stage

This was Kozo’s personalized version of the emotional ups and downs of that historic game between the birds and their much better funded crosstown rivals.

4. Tokyo vs Chunichi Game 5 – Climax Series 2nd Stage

Garrett wrote the season-ending game report after the team’s loss to eventual Japan Series Runner-up, Chunichi. The comments at the end of this post were very much appreciated by all of us here at the site.

3. Online Yakyu Writer Insights: 2011 Tokyo Swallows

For this article, I interviewed Yakyu Baka’s Gen Sueyoshi, NPB Tracker’s Patrick Newman, and Jason Coskrey from the Japan Times to see what they thought about Tokyo’s chances in 2011. It’s interesting to re-read this article nearly a year later and see how things actually panned out. I, for one, was completely off on Aoki having a career-best year. Seems the new baseball was the monkey wrench on that one.

2. 2011 Japan Series – Chunichi vs Fukuoka

This is the youngest of the entrants on this short list of popular posts, but it makes sense that it made the cut because it’s essentially seven game reports wrapped into one. Game seven, in which I included play-by-play coverage of how the Hawks finally defeated the Dragons, helped attract a lot of real-time attention to that post.

1. Wishful Thinking (2011 version)

Ah, yes. The annual ritual of putting our foolish hopes and dreams in writing. It’s almost like a belated Christmas Wish List. I swung and missed on most of mine last year. How did you end up doing?

Thanks to everyone who visited Tsubamegun last season! Keep watching this space for an upcoming Wishful Thinking post that we’ll appreciate your feedback on. 

Enjoy the rest of the New Year’s holiday!

The All-Star Team. (From left) Sugimoto, Pellegrini, Nakagawa

We thought this well-timed feature would interest the Tsubamegun. The Asahi Shimbun‘s Rob Smaal chatted with our own Christopher Pellegrini and snapped a photo of him with our dear friends, Messrs. Sugimoto and Nakagawa (without whom, we wouldn’t be on course to be buried in our regular seats).

Enjoy! See you at the game.

Seems like it's been longer than just one year.

In honor of Tsubamegun’s first and (as yet) only official holiday, we’re giving away a limited edition gift to whomsoever best answers one of the following questiony:
1) In your opinion, what was the best Tokyo Swallows off-field moment?

2) Which NPB team has done a good job of reaching out to fans?

We will also award a second prize for the best moniker ascribed to this young holiday.

3) What would you call this auspicious day (May 26th)?

Rules? Don’t exceed 300 words. And leave your answer here. The deadline is Tuesday May 31st.

**The winner of both categories will be announced by Monday June 6th. Prizes will be shipped within one week of award announcements.

Another extended losing streak.

Baseball-wise, the quake has affected a number of things. Firstly the need to save energy has lead to the introduction of a few rules to limit game times. Games will still end in a tie if the teams are tied after 12 innings, but now games will not go into further extra innings after three and a half hours. The clock will begin to tick from the first pitch, not the scheduled start time, and will not be stopped for delays such as rain, wind, fog and other troubles. In the event that a game is ended early because of a blackout the game will be called.

The quake has pushed the schedule back a few weeks and the damage has necessitated the following changes to the schedule. For the month of April teams playing in areas of lower power (basically Eastern Honshu) will be playing day games in order to avoid using power-sucking lights. The NPB executive committee has said that the schedule will proceed as normal and allow teams in the affected areas to play night game in May. It is quite possible, however, that the schedule will be changed once the government announces its energy savings plans for the summer months, when peak energy usage increases 50% from current usage. Games that were cancelled due to the quake have been rescheduled to October, therefore the start of the Climax Series will be pushed accordingly to the end of October. The Nippon Series is expected to be played around November 12.

There are still a lot of unknowns surrounding how baseball will proceed this year, but hopefully it will allow people to forget about their troubles, if only for a short while, and that games will be able to be used as a vehicle for further charity and awareness activities for those in need. We here at Tsubamegun intend to keep on plugging along and bring you the best Swallows coverage starting with our season opener against the Giants later on tonight.

In an effort to forge a little bit of a tradition here, I’m going to continue doing what I’ve done the last two seasons and make some pleas to the Jingu yakyu kami (read: Jingu stadium baseball gods).

I got a decent amount of what I asked for last year after getting completely dissed in 2009. The following is what I was hoping for last year:

1. The Swallows finish the year with a record above .500

2. Barnette wins 10 games

3. Yoshinori stops using Oil of Olay on his hands every night before going to bed

4. Lim makes fewer than 50 appearances (regular season)

5. We start the 2011 campaign with a manager who isn’t old enough to collect pension benefits

I definitely got what I wanted on numbers one and five but got sent back on numbers two (Barnette went 4-5) and four (53 appearances).

Number three? Not so sure. Did oniisan Sato miss any starts last season because of his delicate digits? I can’t remember that he did.

I’ll play it safe and say that I got a 50% return on that wish. That would mean that I did way better in 2010 than in 2009. I wonder if I should wish bigger this year…?

Without further ado:

1. Mikinori Katoh makes at least 15 appearances and keeps his ERA below 4.00

2. Barnette has at least 20 starts and keeps his ERA below 3.50

3. Ogawa calls for the bunt less than he did last year (even though he’ll be the manager for two months longer)

4. Whoever becomes the everyday right fielder gets more than 400 plate appearances and collects at least 100 hits

5. Aoki wins the Central League MVP

Feel free to post your comments on my picks and how likely they are to happen. Additionally, just as we’ve done in the past, go ahead and post your own ‘Wishful Thinking’ list for the 2011 season.

Click here for part one: OYWI: NPB Moving Forward?

After a detailed trip through some of the prevailing wisdom on NPB in general, which we’ll return to in the next edition of this interview series, it seemed like the right time to focus exclusively on the birds for a bit. That’s what part two is all about.

The 2010 season, as you’ll recall, was quite the ride! And if the Central League had been more like the 2009 edition, then the birds would have easily walked into the playoffs in second place with home field advantage for the first stage of the Climax Series.

However, 2010 saw three teams put together solid full-season performances while Tokyo didn’t get its act together until June. Even though they were the winningest team in the league from July to the end of the season, it wasn’t enough to overtake the coasting Yomiuri Giants.

The big question now is whether this whole coming-up-short act is going to continue. As the Japan Times’ Jason Coskrey aptly told us, Tokyo “is the Houston Texans of the NPB. They have the pieces, they just seem to underachieve.”

Credit where credit is due though. The Tokyo Swallows finished the 2010 season at 72-68-4 even though they were in 6th place with a record of 13-32-1 on May 26th when former manager Shigeru Takada finally stepped down.

The post-Takada turnaround, as we’ve said many times before, was other-worldly when considering how badly the team was playing just a week prior to Takada’s throwing in the towel (check here for the mid-May, Takada-inspired offensive stats).

My routine pouting about sacrifice bunting notwithstanding, Tokyo fans were afforded many reasons to be excited about baseball last season, and they are desperate for the good times to continue!

The pitching, of course, looks pretty good for 2011. The birds just re-signed Tony Barnette, the right-handed starter who showed flashes of dependability last season, and Lim inked a nest egg for his great-great-grandchildren during the off-season to ensure that we have a fearsome closer in the bullpen.

Teamed with the Daisuke Araki-guided rotation and middle relief, the Swallows look to have the makings of another solid pitching corps.

The offense, on the other hand, is a little bit more of a question mark. Guiel and Whitesell will be back, but D’Antona was unfortunately let loose. He had a rough season last year, but then again he was never given the day-to-day starts that helped him earn July MVP honors in 2009. Whoever picks him up will be getting a bargain.

An unknown quantity in the form of Wladimir Balentien has joined the squad

Balentien has spent time with Seattle and Cincinnati.

to compete with Guiel for a spot in the outfield, but no matter how that works out, expect big things from their neighbor in center, Norichika Aoki.

Barring major injury or posting system foolishness, Aoki will be playing in North America in 2012, so don’t be shocked if he puts up career-best numbers this season.

Iihara, Hatakeyama and Tanaka should continue to make their presence felt this year, and the competition for the starting spot at short should be fun to watch.

If Miyamoto and Aikawa can stay off IR (hey, can we get the deep-muscle-massage crew that keeps all the old guys on the Phoenix Suns roster healthy?!), then there’s definitely sustainable hope for the offense. Third place in the Central is what I’m thinking for 2011.

But that’s just my opinion.

Apparently, I don’t have a whole lot of company.

The general consensus seems to be that the birds will finish fourth. Gen Sueyoshi from Yakyu Baka and Patrick Newman from NPB Tracker explain that the top three teams from 2010 are still too strong for Tokyo to easily make a move into the playoffs.

“[Tokyo] obviously has some top-notch talent, but they have challenges in that they won’t score as much as Yomiuri or Hanshin, and they’re looking up at Chunichi in terms of run prevention.

“Yakult has great rotation depth and a pretty good bullpen though, so if they can hit a little more consistently and one of Yomiuri/Hanshin/Chunichi falters, they have a shot at a playoff spot,” said Newman.

Sueyoshi largely agreed that the Swallows are likely destined for fourth place this year due to the relative strength of the wealthier clubs that finished ahead of them last season.

Maybe Tokyo can use these guys as the second farm team?

At the same time, he pointed to the young talent that all three of 2010′s B-class teams have waiting in the wings as a source of excitement for the next few seasons.

“The Swallows have a fairly solid core of young players and might be poised to make some noise in the near future.

“But I also think that Yokohama and Hiroshima have a fairly solid core group of young players and things could get interesting in the CL over the new few years,” he said.

Good point. Especially as far as Tokyo is concerned. The Swallows haven’t got short figured out yet, but there are three or four very interesting young players who could easily keep veterans Fujimoto and Kawashima on the bench in 2011.

Kawabata (23), Morioka (26) and Onizaki (27) are three players who showed promise last year, and Tokyo’s first round draft pick, Tetsuto Yamada, should also get a decent shot at playing between Miyamoto and Tanaka in Tokyo’s infield.

Accordingly, another reason for Tokyo fans to be optimistic, at least over the medium to long-term, is the fact that Chunichi, Hanshin and Yomiuri’s lineups are a bit ass-heavy with aging superstars.

Sueyoshi pointed to Yomiuri as a case in point: “While they’re putting a lot of effort into growing their farm system, I don’t know if/when they’ll be able to replace stars like Michihiro Ogasawara, Alex Ramirez, and Shinnosuke Abe.”

It should be very interesting to see if homegrown stars such as Sakamoto and Yamaguchi can live up to the expectations that have been placed on them by the Yomiuri organization and their fans.

At any rate, even if they can’t plug those holes with talent from their farm team, I think we can be confident that Yomiuri will just buy an all-star from another team as they did with Ogasawara and Ramirez.

And Tani.

And Kroon, Greisinger and Lee.

Coskrey was just slightly more optimistic about Tokyo’s chances when he talked to us.

“If they can convince themselves they can compete, then they will. Which is why I like Ogawa as their manager. He’s a good influence in the clubhouse.

“The new ball may keep more balls in the park and could be a great equalizer for their pitchers.

“The top three are going to be tough to beat. The team’s cheap ways of the past, losing Seth and Rami for instance, I think will keep them fourth, but I wouldn’t be that surprised to see them finish third.”

Well, the good news is that nobody, including us, has the team pegged to get run into the ground this season.

But the outlook for 2011 is not entirely rosy if you listen (as we do) to the opinions of Coskrey, Sueyoshi and Newman, three of the most attentive NPB writers you’ll find in English on the Internet.

In part three of this series we will return our focus to the general state of affairs in NPB and myriad minor details such as the value of Japanese print, TV and Internet media baseball coverage.