We Love Marines

As I woke up this morning I was greeted by an unfamiliar face – the sun! It didn’t last all day of course but it was there, peeking through, and most of the day, too. That made it feel like, well, spring. What better time for some baseball?

Because I am not real bright sometimes I forgot to put on the sunscreen so even though it was mostly cloudy after this morning I find myself with a nice warm red face. Or maybe it’s not sunburn, maybe it’s excitement from getting to meet some of my favorite players?

First things first – I decided to make separate photo and video posts when I return to Chiba rather than muck about with some kluge method of posting now. I have included a few pictures so far but they are just from my crappy phone camera (and yes, I am banging out these blog posts from my phone – this is what happens when you get baseball fever!)

I spent the morning watching the pitchers, first with the entire staff performing defensive drills and then some pitchers simulating game conditions for 50-100 pitches. It was interesting to see that the pitchers were still quite loose and seeming to have fun while working hard. The simulated game conditions drills were much more intense as the pitchers would work on certain pitches with a catcher and an actual umpire calling balls and strikes.

I spent a lot of time watching Yabuta, our ex-reliever now returned from the major leagues. He was throwing an interesting array of pitches from a fastball with movement to a big, slow breaker that was almost like Komiyama’s shake ball. Practicing with him were Kobayashi, new ex-Orix reliever Kawagoe, Hattori, and Kodai Matsumoto. Hattori was also fascinating to watch as he really mixed up his timing as he went through his pitches.

The pitchers swapped out as they finished their set practice, so in came Naruse (our opening day starter? Seems logical), Ohtani, and Kimura. Kimura is a bit odd up close – he looks as young if not younger than Karakawa (but he’s over 4 years older) and is very smooth when he throws, though he’s like a stringbean. I didn’t get to any ni-gun games last year so I didn’t get a chance to see him, really.

There was another intra-squad scrimmage today as well, so I wandered over to get a good seat as I was sure it’d be nearly full again, especially with the nice weather. On the way I stopped by the Ishigaki26 booth. Ishigaki26 is the Ryuku islands fan club (i’ll put a link to their home page when I return) and the fan club president, the very friendly Fumihiro Oshiro, was working the booth. We chatted a while about the state of he team and the upcoming season, snapped a few photos together, and I walked away with some nice Ishigaki26 t-shirts for the memories.

The lineup today was much the same as yesterday, though the white team switched to black and vice versa. For some reason the team in away blacks was referred to as the red team, but whatever, they were wearing black so they’re the black team to me.

For the black team ex-BayStar starter Nasuno (acquired in the Shimizu trade-cum-salary dump) took the hill for the first 3 innings. His opponent was local hero Yuta Ohmine (I need to make the distinction between the Ohmines as his brother is a new team member, though Shota is in ni-gun camp).

I multitasked taking pictures, keeping score, and chatting with my neighbors (more or less the usual suspects) while enjoying the game – perhaps all suffered by the disjointed effort. Anyway young (Yuta) Ohmine got positively lit up for his troubles today, much like Matsumoto yesterday. I scored it as 6ER, 6 hits, 1 hbp (if you can believe it, on Imae), 1 walk and 2 Ks. Not his best work, obviously. The black team had a 6-0 lead midway through the 2nd and never looked back. Most of those 6 runs came off a 3 run triple (possibly an error on Minami in right, but the wind was blowing so I’ll call it a hit) and two separate RBIs by Ohmatsu, both on sacrifices.

Nasuno got the job done quite well. He gave up 1ER on 1 hit and 2 walks in 3 innings of work. Itoh pitched the next two for the black team and was pretty classical Itoh – 3 hits, 2 Ks and a balk, but no runs. New import Bryan Corey went the next 2 in perfect fashion. It was the first game action I’ve seen of Corey so far and he was quite impressive. The ball was popping into Sato’s glove and Corey looked downright intimidating when throwing heat – proof in the upcoming picture posts. My guy Uchi finished up the last two for the black squad, giving up two hits hut no runs.

Ogino picked up where Ohmine left off – unfortunately that’s in terms of effectiveness, too, as he got beat up for another two runs in 2 innings of work and looked really rough doing it. Can the April 2009 Ogino please come back to the pen?

Ueno took the next two innings and shut the black team down, and our (possible) new reliever in for a tryout, Tejeda, took the hill again for the last two innings and was sneakily effective, pitching around batters and getting many outs. He ended up giving up only 2 baserunners in 2IP.

One odd thing I noticed about Tejeda’s mechanics – he went from a 3/4 arm slot and threw across his body for much of the 8th but came straight over the top for most (if not all) the 9th. I don’t recall seeing too often a pitcher change his arm slot that radically through the cours of an appearance. Picture evidence to come in the picture posts…

Some other player notes:
-Imaoka hasn’t gotten anything going with the bat so far as I’ve seen but he’s played a very nice defensive hot corner.
-Kim Taekyun has done basically nothing in the time Ive seen him. He looks out of shape, so I hope there is enough time in this preseason for him to get into shape and get his form correct.
-Nemoto made one hell of a great diving snag at second to steal a hit.
-Muniz is such a raw talent, but he’s definitely a talent. He muffed a few balls in right yesterday but made one amazing throw to nail Takehara at he plate today by a good 6 steps. He threw that ball on a rope. He swings like a Vlad Guerrero type at the plate but when he connects it goes far.

There’s much more to say, but for both of you who have made it this far’s sake I’ll put it in another post.

I imagine this place is a tropical paradise. It’s got lovely blue water, tropical plants and flowers growing on quiet lanes, and best of all. – Lotte spring camp. The rain has gone away today but if anything it’s colder – it feels like an April evening game more than a lovely spring. Before you say “Hey, April is spring!” I’d like to invite you to feel what a mid-April night is like in Makuhari. Warm, it ain’t.

I’ve been taking tons of photos as usual but my hotel has no Internet so I can’t post any photos or videos until I am back in Chiba. That pains me but I’ll fix it with a few hundred MB of photos next week. I think I am joking about that one!

It’s much more crowded today, and I see many familiar faces among the fans visiting. I just ran into someone I didn’t know but who knew me. She told her friend “This guy is at all the games, he’s always cheering really loudly!”

A scrimmage is about to start. Real baseball!

Kobayashi gets the start for the white team and Hattori for the black. It’s my first look at Hattori – he gets many weak infield pops off his oddly slow delivery. He’s really keeping Imaoka busy at third so far.

The game stays scoreless until the fourth when (La la la) Takehara cranks a solo shot to center right for the black team. The white team ties it up with a run in the 5th as (I believe, I forgot to write it down) Imae singled in Satozaki.

The tiny stadium at Ishigaki Chuo Undo Koen was pretty well filled all game as the fans – most of them local, I presume but also some familiar faces from Chiba Marine – enjoyed cheering good plays from both sides of the scrimmage. It seemed to me that there was much cheering for Imaoka, perhaps because of his reputation a few years ago. In the middle of the game some special needs fans sat right behind me and cheered loudly. I giggled with a grandmother and her young grandson as they tried to remember Korean to cheer Taekyun. A blind teenage girl had her family describe to her what was going on – she was an Imaoka fan, too, as she cheered him loudly. A pleasant game, really.

In the later innings the bats really took over. An ex-major league reliever, Michael Tejeda (more on him in a moment), has been in camp this weekend for a tryout. He was brought in in the 8th for the white team with only a practice jersey. He went right at Tsuyoshi and Tsuyoshi almost took him out, knocking a double off the center field fence. Minami singled to score Tsuyoshi from second and Taekyun hit a first pitch single to right to score Minami.

In the white team bottom of the 8th Matsumoto Kodai took the hill for the black team. Iguchi hit the third HR of the game to right to make it 3-2. In the bottom of the 9th Matsumoto stayed and the white team got some BP in as Fukuura led off with a solo HR, Sato singled, Muniz doubled high off the right field fence (one thing I loved about watching this sort of scrimmage was the loosy-goosy attitude of the players. They looked like they were really having fun out there. As Muniz made his at bat the white team dugout really egged him on. Fukuura led with his yells of “Muniz! Bueno! Bueno!”. Iguchi was tagged out trying to steal and after Tsuyoshi tagged him out he popped him on the head with his glove as if to say “Baka”. Sato laughed as he loped to third after Muniz doubled him over, mostly because it looked like he might go for home when really he had a hard time making it to third in the first place. Good times.)

Where was I? Oh yeah, Muniz just missed out on an HR doubling right off the fence. Hayasaka scored Sato with a double and Heiuchi tripled in both runners. Imae doubled home Heiuchi and Iguchi homered for the last runs of the game, mercifully for Matsumoto, who gave up all that.

I have seen every ichi-gun player in action so far except Saburo and local hero Ohmine. New foreign import reliever Bill Murphy pitched two in relief today, showing some nice power. I also saw my first views of ex-BayStars pitcher Nasuno (he was pitching simulated innings with the other members of the pitching staff) and had a chance to chat for 30 seconds or so with Michael Tejeda. His second inning of work today was much stronger than the first as he was hitting corners with breaking pitches (couldn’t tell what kind from the side) with good vertical movement. He was getting the calls from the umps and the batters didn’t seem to like the calls, so I figure it was good movement in general. Anyway I asked if he was officially signed to the team yet and he said no, it was still a tryout but he hoped to be on the team. Friendly guy, I hope he can help us out.

I just made it to Ishigaki to watch some Lotte spring camp. Right off the plane, drop off the bags at the hotel, go watch my team prepare for the 2010 season. The weather could be nicer, but right now I’m watching the pitchers work on defensive skills. Life is good.

I’ll be updating this post as the day goes on, hopefully with photos (if I can figure out how to do that from my phone!)

Apparently I brought the chilly wet weather with me. A fellow fan tells me it was 26 or 27 yesterday. Yahoo tenki says it’s 18 right now. Yahoo tenki lies, it can’t be more than 10 or 12, especially with the drizzle.

One strange (to me) thing is about 80% of the visitors are women. Maybe it’s not strange, but I didn’t expect it.

After my first part of this post I went to see the position players practicing run-downs and bunt coverage. I got my first up close look at new slugger Kim Tae-kyun: he’s absolutely massive up close, like Seibu’s Nakamura. Good thing he doesn’t have to run much at first.

Also got my first look at number 1 pick Ogino and new foreign imports Corey and Murphy. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to say hello to all of them this weekend.

2pm: More batting practice. Juan Muniz is belting line drives. I’ve yet to see a grounder from him. It’s a great time to chat with the players as they wander by. I’ve been hoping to say hello to Heiuchi but he’s zipped by several times without stopping. I did get a chance to say hello to recent signee Imaoka, he’s quite friendly.

No sign of Saburo, perhaps he’s still sitting out with his gimpy back?

Hope to see Kim take a few swings, but it seems to be getting colder, so maybe he’s being sensible and staying inside.