You remember Aaron Guiel, don’t you? That journeyman fifth outfielder who once hit 15 homers for the Kansas City Royals back in 2003? Who batted .256 in 82 at-bats with the Yankees in 2006? Who posted a major league career line of .246/.338/.447 in parts of six major league seasons?

Sure you do.

Well, three years on since his last major league appearance, Guiel has undergone a mini career renaissance playing in Japan for the Yakult Swallows. In his first year in Japan, in 2007, Guiel (or “Gai-eru” in Japanese) belted 35 homers, which tied for second in the league. After an injury plagued 2008 campaign, Guiel has come back strong with 23 homers and a respectable .262/.361/.512 line.

Along the way, he has earned the nickname “Angel” from Japanese fans, due to his blond, curly hair and his reportedly angelic demeanor, as well as his own cheering section in Jingu Stadium, instantly recognizable by its frenetic waving of Canadian flags whenever Guiel comes up to bat (Guiel is from Vancouver).

And of course, as a starting player on a Japanese team, Guiel has his very own personal fight song, which the fans sing at the top of their lungs whenever he bats:

(Trumpet Fanfare=first several notes of “Oh Canada”)

Oh! Guiel! You hit the ball!
Oh! Guiel! A home run!
Aa-ron Gui-el! The man who works miracles!
Toward the stands you launch, a timely blast!

This week, in honor of the World Baseball Classic, we are coming up with “All-Time Teams” for as many of the participating nations as we can. Having already checked out the Canadians and the Italians, we now turn to the Japanese.

Creating an all-time team for Japan is an interesting exercise because many legitimately great Japanese players never had a chance to play in the Major Leagues, but probably still would have performed well in the Majors if they had ever gotten the chance.

Thus, rather than confining ourselves only to Major Leaguers, which would have been quite boring and predictable, we’ve created a combined list which gets much closer to representing a true list of the greatest players at each position ever produced by Japan.

For the purposes of this exercise, we will allow non-Japanese players who were born as citizens of the Japanese Empire, such as Sadaharu Oh, but exclude foreign-born players who played in Japan, such as White Russian ace Victor Starffin or American slugger Tuffy Rhodes.

Here’s how the squad from the land of wind and ghosts shakes out…

Starting Lineup

Catcher: Katsuya Nomura - Nomura is the second greatest Japanese player when measured statistically.  His 657 homers are second all time in Japanese baseball, behind only Oh, and he did it all while playing the demanding position of catcher.  Nomura was amazingly durable, catching a ridiculous 2920 games and playing across four decades from the 1950s to the 1980s before becoming a very successful manager.

First Base: Sadaharu Oh - Unquestionably the greatest Japanese player ever, the half-Taiwanese Oh smashed a world record 868 homers, and was so good that even given the difference in league talent levels he would almost certainly have been not only a star in the Major Leagues, but actually a major league Hall of Famer (Baseball Guru estimates he would have hit 527 homers had he played the same number of years in the majors).

Second Base: Shigeru Chiba – Chiba is the greatest second baseman in Japanese Baseball history, renowned for his outstanding plate discipline, his blazing speed on the basepaths, and his slick fielding at second, earning him the nickname “Formidable Buffalo” which was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, given that he was only 5′6″ and 140 pounds.

Third Base: Shigeo Nagashima – Nagashima is the second greatest Japanese player ever when measured by how Japanese people feel in their hearts.  A fearsome hitter and an outstanding defensive third sacker, he was Oh’s partner in crime and protection in the lineup when the Yomiuri Giants won 9 Japan Series in a row in the ’60s and ’70s, and with his quirky personality and aura of greatness he remains perhaps the most beloved man in all of Japan to this day, even moreso than Oh.

Shortstop: Kazuo Matsui – Believe it or not, Kazuo Matsui is actually the greatest Japanese shortstop ever. Despite his at times lackluster performance in the majors, the numbers he has put up beat the numbers that could be reasonably projected for other Japanese shortstop greats, and he also enjoyed a fine career in Japanese baseball before coming over.

Left Field: Hideki Matsui - Godzilla’s proven track record of offensive excellence at the highest level playing for the Yankees, in addition to his monstrous production before coming over, make him the choice to play left field, despite his lackluster defense.

Center Field: Ichiro – Ichiro is not actually the greatest Japanese player ever, but he is most certainly the greatest centerfielder, and is well on his way to the Major League Hall of Fame on the merits of his major league numbers alone.

Right Field: Isao Harimoto – A Zainichi Korean (real name: Jang Hoon) and a survivor of the Hiroshima atom bomb, Harimoto is the only Japanese baseball player to record 3000 hits, and he is second in career batting average (by one point) at .319, and third in bases on balls.

Rotation and Closer

Ace: Masaichi Kaneda - Kandeda won an all-time Japanese record 400 games from from 1950 to 1969, averaging exactly 20 wins a year for 20 straight years.

No. 2 Starter: Kazuhisa Inao (pictured) - The Sandy Koufax of Japan, nobody can touch his peak, including 20 wins in a row in 1957 and a Japanese record 42-win season in 1961.

No. 3 Starter: Daisuke Matsuzaka – At age 28, Daisuke is already a living legend and one of the greatest Japanese pitchers ever, and he still has a lot of time left to do more great things.

No. 4 Starter: Eiji Sawamura (pictured) – Japanese pitching legend who once struck out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Charlie Gehringer and Jimmy Foxx back-to-back-to-back-to-back. The Japanese equavalent of the Cy Young award is named the “Sawamura Award” in his honor.

No. 5 Starter: Hideo Nomo – Nomo was not necessarily a superstar in the slap-hitting Japanese leagues, but he thrived in free swinging America, where he rode his devastating forkball to a productive and strikeout-filled career.

Closer: Kazuhiro Sasaki – Sasaki is as good a closer as Japan has ever produced, having great success in both Japanese baseball and in the Majors with the Seattle Mariners.

Final Verdict: The Japanese squad is truly formidable across the board, and would match up well with just about anybody.

Eiji Sawamura

As a Japanese citizen now living in America, I’m a bit unnerved by this new rule being instituted by Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), the Japanese professional baseball league. In an effort to prevent a mass exodus of talented amateur players from Japan to the United States, the owners of the twelve teams in the NPB have decided to ban any player who chooses to play overseas straight out of high school for three years. For those who go abroad straight out of college or their company team*, the ban would be for two years.

*Quick explanation. In Japan, company teams have their own leagues and it’s taken very seriously. It’s fairly common for men to be hired for a job simply based on his ability to play sports. It’s a bit more than the company-sponsored softball games here in the States.

This whole thing is a reaction to the news that Junichi Tazawa, a 22-year old righty pitcher for Nippon Oil (yes, this is one of those company teams), has decided to forgo playing in the NPB in favor of coming to America in the hopes of making a career in MLB.

Junichi Tazawa

Under this new rule, if Tazawa succeeds in signing a contract with a MLB team – which is a near certainty at this point – but fails in his quest to become a big leaguer, he’d be barred from playing professionally in his home country for two years.

Now, excuse the hyperbole, but this is borderline insanity.

Look, I get it. From the NPB’s perspective, this is a matter of “survival”. From Hideo Nomo to Daisuke Matsuzaka, Japanese baseball has been losing its biggest national stars for over a decade now and consequently, fan interest is waning. Television ratings are down as well as attendance, and its becoming more and more difficult for the league to be able to turn a profit.

As someone who began playing and following the game before he even knew that there was a world outside Japan, this decline in popularity bothers me. I want baseball to prosper over there. I feel a sense of pride when I see my countrymen succeeding on the international stage, whether it be as players in MLB or as a national team at the World Baseball Classic or the Olympics. I know that Ichiro can be a jerk who can’t walk to save himself! I don’t care! He’s Ichiro!

But what overrides this sense of national pride and love of baseball is my disdain for this kind of utilitarian nationalism that strikes me as downright immoral. There is absolutely nothing wrong with an 18-year old with incredible baseball skills wanting to challenge himself at the highest level possible, alongside the very same players he idolized from afar. And to get paid to do so. Why should he get punished? Because he wasn’t willing to help a baseball team that he doesn’t even work for turn a profit? Are you kidding me?

I do not like what this says about the NPB. This is not only somewhat fascistic, it’s also potentially short-sighted. I don’t think that this will prevent those who feel strongly about playing in the MLB as soon as possible from crossing the Pacific. And if they do and fail to catch on, they lose two years of development time at the professional level, thus lowering the level of competition in the NPB. They’re shooting themselves in the foot and they’re looking like total bullies in the process. I just don’t see any upside from this at all.

When you think about it, there are a lot of spiffy things about the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks of the Nippon Pro Baseball League.

Their manager is living legend Sadaharu Oh. They play at a beautiful location on the shore of the ocean in a park that looks like the Terrordrome. They are one of Japan’s richest teams, and are perennial postseason contenders.

Not to mention, they also produced major leaguers Kenji Johjima and Tadahito Iguchi. And helped the great Tony Batista find a home away from home last season. And being from Fukuoka, of course they have the hottest fans.

But perhaps the coolest thing about the Hawks is their awesome fight song:

sb-hawks-new.mp3

It turns out that all Japanese teams have a team fight song. Most of these songs are patterned after old prewar Japanese military marches, and have extremely militaristic lyrics. The Hawks song actually refers to the team as a gundan, or “war group,” which is literally the same term the Japanese Imperial Army used to use to refer to its main armies.

Japan may have become a pacifist country since World War II, but you wouldn’t know it when you see 30,000 fanatical fans belting out these war songs at the top of their lungs in the echo chamber that is the Fukuoka Yahoo! Dome.

Here is my English translation of the the amazing lyrics to this amazing song:

In the salty wind of the broad unfathomable sea,

mighty wings are forged,

which, like a squall, fearlessly

striving for glory, soar!

Let’s go, you invincible battalion of young hawks!

Let’s go, you fiery battalion of young hawks!

Our, yes our Softbank Hawks!

In the grand pennant race,

fighting spirit aflame, striking down the enemy,

each pitch, each hit a streak of fire,

the ball calls forth a passionate storm!

Let’s go, you invincible battalion of young hawks!

Let’s go, you fiery battalion of young hawks!

Our, yes our Softbank Hawks!

Give a victory shout!

Give a victory shout!

If we fight to the limits of strength

victory will always reside here,

and in the shining sky, the deeply emotional

championship banner will flutter.

Let’s go, you invincible battalion of young hawks!

Let’s go, you fiery battalion of young hawks!

Our, yes our Softbank Hawks!

If only the Royals had a fight song like this! A fight song about being an invincible battalion, and striking down the enemy with a fighting spirit aflame in order to capture the deeply emotional American League pennant. They’d never lose!

And powerful and passionate free agents like Tony Batista might sign with them, instead of running off to Japan.

So the Dodgers have signed Japanese starting pitcher Hiroki Kuroda to a 3-year, $35.2 million deal.

As a Dodgers fan, I’m not exactly sure how I feel about this. I mean, Kuroda was definitely the best Japanese pitcher on the market this year so that’s good, but how good is he really? We know his is better than Kei Igawa, but we also know he is worse than Daisuke Matsuzaka, so where exactly does that leave the Dodgers? Maybe he is a 4th starter in the Majors? But he could also turn out to be worse than a 5th starter. I’m not sure a pitcher falling into that range is at all worth $12 million a year or a 3-year commitment.

But one thing that really bugs me is the way pretty much the entire sabermetric community has been attempting to evaluate Kuroda and in fact all Japanese pitchers, namely by looking at stats like their strikeout and walk rates per 9 innings.

Now in fairness, in recent years, since we have come to understand the magic of BABIP and the fact that pitchers really have little control over what happens to a batted ball once it is put into play, things like strikeout, walk, and homer rates have been increasingly used to evaluate and project pitcher performance, dare I say with increasingly effective results. And in general, you can put me squarely in the camp of people who favor using these metrics to project performance by major leaguers from year to year and minor leaguers called up to the majors.

HOWEVER, I think that these types of stats begin to approach uselessness when evaluating Japanese pitchers. At least if they are used in isolation, and not part of a more considered approach.

Why? Because as anyone who has any real familiarity with Japanese baseball knows, there are real cultural differences between Japanese and American baseball that merely looking at stats cannot show you.

In this particular case, the difference is that in Japan, nothing a batter can do is worse or more humiliating than a strikeout. Japanese batters will do almost anything to avoid striking out, including choking up on the bat, slap-hitting, and bunting against tough strikeout pitchers. Japanese managers routinely bench players who strike out a few times in a row. In fact the swing they teach Japanese players from their youth is deliberately designed to sacrifice power in exchange for fewer strikeouts.

Walks are also somewhat more frowned upon in Japan than America. In many ways, the attitudes in Japanese baseball are what American baseball was like until about 15 years ago, where batting average is worshiped as the ultimate stat, and walks are seeing as almost disappointing.

Meanwhile, in America, while there are still the occasional grumbles about people who strike out too much and once in a while somebody like Dusty Baker says something like how walks “clog up the basepaths” (and gets endlessly mocked for it), pretty much everyone recognizes that strikeouts are not as bad as we once thought, and that walks are pretty much unequivocably good. And pretty much all players except Ichiro use the modern, full bodied swing designed to generate home runs and a lot of hard line drives, rather than the all-arms, slap-hitting swing which really hasn’t been seen much in America since the days of Ty Cobb.

So while looking at strikeout and walk rates work great for evaluating the chance for minor league pitchers to do well in the Majors, because those players are playing within the same baseball culture, it is completely foolish to do the exact same thing for Japanese pitchers. Hasn’t anyone noticed that basically all Japanese pitchers, from Hideo Nomo to Daisuke Matsuzaka and everyone in between, have seen their strikeout rates improve and their walk rates decline when they come over to the Majors?

This is why I get so sick of people saying that Takashi Saito was a fluke for being a mediocre middle reliever in Japan but an astonishingly good closer in America. No, he is not a fluke. His pinpoint command, and ability to miss bats just plays better in America, where people actually try to take walks, but also don’t mind striking out as much. In Japan, his always being around the zone was not as much of an asset because nobody was going to walk anyway, and his low-90s fastball with late life and back-door slider were not as effective either against slap hitters who would wait back an extra second on those pitches and just try to slap them into play.

Which is all to explain why I get so annoyed when people say things like this:

The thing is, Kuroda isn’t all that exciting of a pitcher. To best make my point, we’ll play the beloved compare Kuroda to a mystery player game.

Kuroda, age 32 season: 179.7 IP, 6.16 K/9, 2.10 BB/9, 2.92 K/BB, 1 HR/9

Mystery pitcher, age 28 season: 192.7 IP, 5.70 K/9, 2.66 BB/9, 2.14 K/BB, 1.03 HR/9

And the mystery pitcher is…a small Filipino woman. Have I just blown your mind?

No wait, it’s Kyle Lohse. Point is that while Kuroda is the superior pitcher, the fact that Lohse is four years younger, pitched in two of the biggest hitters parks in baseball, and actually was facing big league competition makes the gap mighty close. Now, since the general reaction to a Kyle Lohse signing would be Jonestown-esque, acquiring someone who might be a little better shouldn’t inspire much confidence.

Now the guy over at the True Blue LA blog (whom I actually respect in general) obviously thought he was being pretty clever by noticing this comparison between Kuroda and the much reviled Kyle Lohse, but while as I indicated above I’m not so sure that Kuroda is all that exciting of a pitcher either, I submit to you that the reasoning behind this kind of comparison is severely flawed, and that a rate 6.16 K/9 in Japan is much more impressive than it would be if it had been achieved in America.

Comparing home run rates is also silly, since Japan has much smaller ballparks than America does. And I’m not even going to get into the different strike zone in Japan, or the different ball, as this post is already getting quite long. The point is, when it comes to rates like these, Japanese pitchers need to be compared to other Japanese pitchers, or other pitchers who came to America from Japan. Comparing these rates directly to Kyle Lohse, who is pitching against batters with a completely different hitting philosophy, is truly comparing apples and oranges.

You may not know this, but back on October 19th, the Kansas City Royals named Trey Hillman as their new manager (the news was rudely overshadowed by the Boston Red Sox who insisted on playing Game 6 of their series against the Indians the following day, thus putting themselves above the game of baseball). So who’s Trey Hillman, you ask? Well, even if you didn’t ask, I’m going to tell you.

Hillman was last employed by a MLB team in 2002, when the Texas Rangers appointed him as Director of Player Development, and was a manager in the Yankees farm system for eleven years prior. For the last five years, though, Hillman was on the other side of the earth, managing the Nippon Ham Fighters of the Nippon Professional Baseball league. And no, the team name is not the “Ham Fighters”. It’s just the Fighters. Nippon Ham is a company that owns the club. And yes, they make ham. Let’s move on.

Hillman had much success managing the Fighters, winning the NPB title in 2006. And somewhere along the line, he became a cult icon. As Joe Posnanski writes, “They love Hillman in Japan”. (By the way, even Bobby Valentine has a huge fanbase over there. In fact, Valentine has a hamburger named after him called “Bobby Burger”, which is sold at the fast-food chain Lotteria. The burger apparently has cheese, barbecue sauce, and a pineapple.)

Hillman even has a restaurant dedicated to him in Sapporo (where the Fighters play) called Hillman’s Hangout, which according to the website is an “American-style Bar & Grill”. The Hangout had its grand opening on October 11th! Then eight days later, it was announced that Hillman was leaving Japan to manage the Royals… Ouch…

But if you’re ever in the Sapporo-neighborhood and get a hankering for an Onion Loaf with a Thousand Island sauce, stop on by to Hillman’s Hangout. Tell them UmpBump sent you (and you will most likely receive some puzzled looks).

We know that famous athletes often get to have special songs associated with them. Back in the day, they used to compose special songs for players like Willie Mays (“Say What? Say who? Say Willie!“) or Jackie Robinson (“Did you see Jackie Robinson hit that ball?“). Joe DiMaggio was immortalized in “Mrs. Robinson” by Simon and Garfunkel. Even today, really great closers get to lay claim to popular songs they use as their theme music when they enter from the pen.

But one ballplayer who almost certainly never expected to have a special song, let alone a special song composed specifically for him which mentions him by name, is Andy Sheets.

Those of you who have really good memories will recall Andy Sheets as a journeyman utility infielder who hit for a .216 batting average and 19 home runs in parts of 7 seasons with the Mariners, Padres, Angels, Red Sox, and Devil Rays.

Yes, that Andy Sheets, the guy at least one blog has called “a poor man’s Mike Benjamin.” Ouch.

But now Sheets is playing in the Nippon Professional Baseball league, serving as the everyday first baseman for the Hanshin Tigers, who are Japan’s answer to the Boston Red Sox in a number of ways.

One of the ways the Tigers resemble the Sox is their hyper-emotional fans, who are the most fanatical of all the Japanese teams. They insist on writing a special song, not just for the stars, but for every player on the team, and belt out that player’s song at the top of their lungs, not just in crucial situations, but every time he comes to bat for the entire season.

And thus Andy Sheets finds himself with his own song, named after him, and dedicated to his glory:

http://tigers-hm.net/03sheets.html

(Even if you can’t read Japanese, all you have to do is click on the play button in the middle of the screen)

Not that Sheets isn’t at least somewhat deserving of his own song. In four seasons in Japan he’s compiled a .299 batting average and blasted 86 homers.

And just in case you are curious as to what it all means, this is my English translation of the glorious lyrics of the glorious Andy Sheets Song!

Andy! Andy!

Let’s start a contact-hitting revolution!

Oh, Andy! Here we go!

Andy! Andy!

By the way, if this demo version intended to help fans learn the song doesn’t sound all that impressive, you’ll just have to imagine a packed house at Koshien Stadium, shaking the place to its foundations, and screaming this at the top of their lungs. Also, imagine about 50 more drums, hundreds more horns, and thousands more whistles.

I don’t think “awe-inspiring” is too strong a word.

On an occassion on par with Branch Rickey signing Jackie Robinson to a contract in August of 1945, or Roberto Clemente becoming the first Latin player to be elected to the Hall of Fame in 1973, the Washington Nationals announced on Monday that they would venture forth into a brave new world full of peril and mystique. It is full of unknowns – but they will cavalierly march forth for the glimmer of hope that untapped potential lies ahead.

They will start scouting Asian players.

Wait, what’s that you say? Other teams have been doing this for years? It’s not new? Then why the hell did the Nationals wait so long?  

All right, so maybe I laid the sarcasm on WAAAAAAAYYYYYY too thick, but come on. For all the talk about competitive imbalances in baseball due to the lack of a salary cap, aren’t oversights like this just as big (if not bigger) a reason? There have already been over 30 Japanese players who have played a big league game. South Korea has produced twelve and Taiwan three. Some of them have gone on to play some top-notch baseball – Ichiro, Hideki Matsui, Takashi Saito, Chien-Ming Wang, etc.  And the Nationals just realized that they were missing out. Here’s what Bill Rizzo, Nats VP of Baseball Operations, said about it:

“This is the first time we really went in and saturated (Japan). As time goes by, we’ll build databases and have more information. But we feel like we have a good handle on it.”

Now I understand that a team like the Nationals never really had much of a shot to get players like Hideki Matsui and Daisuke Matsuzaka for financial reasons. But there is one instance where the Nationals can get a leg up on the competition – find a newer, better, version of Mac Suzuki.

Suzuki was the first Japanese player to enter the Major League  without having first played a day of professional ball in his home country. He signed with the Mariners in 1993 as an 18-year old and went on to have an otherwise undistinguished career. But I am curious as to why there aren’t more like him. Granted, having the option of playing professionally in Japan and make a pretty good living may seem like the safer bet for many young players. But there must be some viable prospects who would be very interested in skipping this step altogether. With the current value of young talent in MLB, shouldn’t a team such as the Nationals exploit this before the bigger clubs get in on the action?