Japanese Baseball Q&A
Eric over at The Exrapolater sent me some questions about Japanese baseball a while back and we had an interesting back and forth. He's put the interview together for his readers, and I thought I'd link to it. It's a look at some of the important things to know about baseball in Japan, and I think readers here may enjoy it as well.
posted by Mike Plugh @ 1:09 PM
6 Comments:
Mike,
You probably want to double check the details about Japanese pro-yakyu in your interview. Because of Climax Series this year, both Central and Pacific will play 144 games, respectively. You said 136 and 146 in the interview.
Also mind that: Kouryuu-sen had been deducted from last year's 6 games, against each opposing league's team, into 3 games this year. People are wondering if NPB (and all the Central owners) will like to make it 1 game next year.
Oh, another thing is: There is pro-yakyu fantasy baseball, but not official. Yahoo.jp used to market fantasy for NPB, but the program stopped working since 2004 (?or 2005?).
I'll be frank here: You should definitely be careful about these details, because as your influence grows among American baseball fans, people WILL TRUST everything you said. I love your blogs; you did some great studies of players at their personal level. But from what I am reading here, the interview shows me someone who is misguided about pro-yakyu in general. This is not very encouraging to me next time when I want to quote you on someone or something about pro-yakyu, though you might be perfectly right in most of your points.
Tell me what else I missed dorasaga. The 146 and 136 was simply a matter of misunderstanding the adjustment that was made to the schedule this season. It's a fairly minor detail in the context of that interview considering its something new to the 2007 season after decades of the system and the discussion never really gets around to metrics.
When one discusses fantasy baseball for Pro Yakyu, unofficial leagues are irrelevant. The industry is absolutely booming in the US and is available in dozens of polished and user-friendly environments. It's a multi-million dollar industry. In Japan, as far as I've ever been able to deduce, that has never been the case. It's not even an ichimanen industry.
Where am I misguided in any of the other details? I'm confident that everything I said in the interview is 100% spot on accurate. I take some offense to the notion that I'm somehow misguided about "pro-yakyu in general".
I am eagerly awaiting dorasaga's 100% accurate blog. I know that's the only kind I ever write.
Hey Mike,
I've been enjoying the site, keep up the good work. Have you done anything on his compatriot Hideki Okajima? Is this a fluke season he's having?
I'd also like to know how Okajima's success with the sox is playing with fans in Japan.
Post a Comment
<< Home