An in-depth look at the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, Jingu Stadium, the Central League, and Japanese Pro Baseball
March 30th, 2012 Tokyo Swallows Yomiuri Giants Streak: Won 1 Last 5: W—- (MLB STADIUM JAPAN; aka TOKYO DOME) Opening Night in Japan…and two outs away from a no-hitter After two of the AL West teams opened their season in Japan, Tokyo was anxious to see their two teams open the season. Loyal supporters of [...]
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 [...]
Here are a few things that you might not remember about the players currently on the Tokyo roster: In Fukuchi’s first year with the Swallows (2008), he hit .320/.366/.449. Keizo Kawashima stole 20 bags in his first year with the team (2008) while only getting caught once. However, in 2009 he stole eight but got [...]
Tokyo’s corner infielders, Shinya Miyamoto (3B) and Kazuhiro Hatakeyama (1B), will be on Fuji TV’s “Suporuto!” TV program next Tuesday. That’s Tuesday night actually. From 11:55 PM until 12:35 AM on Wednesday morning. For those of you who live in Japan, tune in to watch these two Tokyo veterans embarrass themselves on the airwaves.
November 3nd, 2011 Tokyo Swallows 3 Chunichi Dragons 1 Series: Chunichi 2-1 Tokyo (Nagoya Dome) With the team already down 2-0 in the series, it goes without saying that tonight’s game was a must win for the Swallows. Amidst much speculation, the Swallows started Ishikawa on 3 days rest against the Dragons’ Chen. But that [...]
October 25th, 2011 Hiroshima Carp 1 Tokyo Swallows 2 Streak: Won 1 Last 5: LWWLW (Meiji Jingu Stadium) This game very nearly sucked. But in the end, it turned out to be a very satisfactory way to end the regular season. The unimportance of this contest was lost on very few people [...]
As if things weren’t already bad enough on the injury front, Tokyo has at least one new headache to deal with. It was reported in the Chunichi Sports online paper that second year infielder, Takahiro Araki, sustained a fractured left ankle during practice. He will miss all future 2011 games. We covered this a bit [...]
October 2nd, 2011 Tokyo Swallows 4 Yokohama BayStars 3 Streak: Won 1 Last 5: WWLLW (Yokohama Stadium) After watching its young pitchers get knocked about the park for the past two days, Tokyo looked to salvage a bit of pride against the recently very feisty BayStars. Tokyo opened the scoring on a solo Hatakeyama [...]
September 27th, 2011 Hanshin Tigers 4 Tokyo Swallows 8 Streak: Won 2 Last 5: LLLWW (Meiji Jingu Stadium) After failing to grasp the chance to put some decent breathing room between them and the second-placed Dragons in Nagoya last week, every game for the remaining three weeks or so of the regular season is essentially [...]
September 24th, 2011 Tokyo Yakult Swallows 2 Chunichi Dragons 3 Streak: Lost 4 Last 5: TLLLL (Nagoya Dome) Another day, another heart-breakingly close loss to the Dragons in Nagoya. The Swallows got their points early as Kawabata managed a two out single off Soto, which Hatake followed with his 21st home run of the season. [...]
