An in-depth look at the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, Jingu Stadium, the Central League, and Japanese Pro Baseball
Holy crap. Is July really here already? Here’s something to read while treading cautiously. We just witnessed a week of starting pitching that was as consistently poor as we’ve seen all year. Tateyama had arguably the best start of the week, giving up four earned runs off of 11 hits in six and two-thirds innings [...]
Today is a travel day for the Tokyo Swallows as they prepare to play games on nine consecutive days. The team’s next scheduled day off is Monday May 7th. 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 [...]
Team News No idea whether this is for real or not, but Ogawa has said that he likes having Yuhei around because he can be used in the outfield or as a pitcher (LHP). Yuhei was a top pitching prospect that never panned out for the Swallows. He started working on converting to the outfield [...]
Tokyo Swallows Wladimir Balentien is having some right elbow issues and hasn’t been able to practice at 100%. It seems like Ogawa is starting to get a little impatient (link in Japanese). Balentien didn’t play in Tokyo’s pre-season game against Hanshin on Saturday. Tokyo beat Hokkaido 3-0 in a practice game on Thursday February 23rd. [...]
Spring camp started for the top team in Okinawa today. Here’s a list of the players that were invited. The Swallows’ Japanese website has a handy schedule that will give you a light peak into what’s ahead for the team. The top team camp has only four officially-scheduled days off, and camp concludes on February 28th. [...]
Tokyo’s Japanese language website announced next year’s coaching staff yesterday. The top team is the same cast of characters as last year. Top Team The farm team has seen a few changes though. Farm Team
It’s that time of year again! The Tokyo Swallows started spring camp today–baseball season is just around the corner! Click here for a camp schedule and 1st/2nd team rosters. 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 [...]
This is part two of a three-part interview series with some of the regulars from the NPB mainstream and independent media. 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 [...]
Ah, the beloved Tak-bunt. Tokyo’s current manager didn’t fib when he said that he wasn’t going to make many changes to the way that the team was coached after taking over for Takada at the end of May. The Tak-bunting continued, but thankfully not at the same rate that it had been previously employed. For the [...]
When Junji Ogawa was first promoted to interim manager, I speculated that he would only hold the job temporarily. However, the Swallows held a press conference today proving me wrong, as they announced that Ogawa will be the full time manager of the Swallows in 2011. Since taking over as manager from Shigeru Takada, the [...]
