J's Take

Opening Day!!

Hello, and welcome to Japanese Baseball Daily, my take on some of the world's best action on the diamond -- as evidenced by back-to-back World Baseball Classic titles.
The season kicks off Saturday with a matchup I hope I get to watch from start to finish before I go to the office. I work for The Daily Yomiuri, backed by the largest paper in Japan.
I’ve covered baseball for five years, and entering my sixth, I can say that the Pacific League, which starts a week before the Central League, is wide open. But the defending PL champion Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters open at home with their ace, the nasty Yu Darvish who has pinpoint control and fires darts. He won the Sawamura Award -- as Japan’s top pitcher -- in 2007 and the right-hander is working his fourth consecutive Opening Day, his sixth overall.
He faces the SoftBank Hawks’ Toshiya Sugiuchi, a Sawamura Award winner in 2005 and Japan’s leader in Ks last season. Sugiuchi has a deceptive delivery and a nasty slider, as many lefties do, and gives the Hawks a great chance to take the opener on the road in Sapporo. Game time is 1 p.m.
The Orix Buffaloes, my pick -- for some unknown reason -- to reach the Japan Series, play at 1:30 p.m. at Kyocera Dome Osaka against last year’s surprise Tohoku Rakuten Eagles, coming off their first winning season. The 6-year-old club has a new manager -- Marty Brown -- and something very much foreign to the club – expectations. As Brown takes over, a win would go far in making his season successful after four as the top man with the loss-prone Hiroshima Carp.
Righty ace Hisashi Iwakuma, the ’08 Sawamura Award winner, gets the ball for the Eagles for his sixth Opening Day start, while Orix sends Chihiro Kaneko, also a righty, to his second opener.
The Saitama Seibu Lions and Chiba Lotte Marines, two teams that have failed to properly address bullpen issues, play at Seibu Dome at 1 p.m. I predicted in The Daily Yomiuri’s Japan Pro Baseball Special, which comes out on Saturday, that neither of these teams will finish in the top three in the PL and reach the postseason.
The Lions won it all in 2008, and the Marines took the crown in 2005. They have fallen off where it counts the most: on the mound.
Opening Day should be a national holiday.