Tom Powers, who apparently has a history of being an idiot, decided to make recently demoted Tsuyoshi Nishioka his punching bag recently. Of course, that would be completely fine, as Nishioka’s been a terrible player for the Minnesota Twins thus far and deserves to be criticized. However, what irked me was the direction in which Powers took the criticism.

Nishioka also is a bit of a diva who big-times the Japanese media, basically refusing to acknowledge their existence except for the designated postgame snippet session in the clubhouse. He just doesn’t treat people very well. His trusty interpreter, Ryo Shinkawa, rarely smiles.

I can’t testify to whether this is true or not, but I do know Ichiro Suzuki and Yu Darvish aren’t exactly friendly with the Japanese media (Hideki Matsui is), though I suppose nobody mentions that because they’re good.

I bring this up because Powers comes off like a sportswriter scorned, and it’s as if he feels that Nishioka has been playing bad enough where he can use the fact that Nishioka’s allegedly not nice to the media to earn points with a Twins fanbase that will inevitably agree with anything negative he writes.

Standard asshole sportswriter troll stuff so far, but then he decides to go with insults in haiku.

In case you haven’t noticed, we had a little Nishi Haiku contest on Twitter the other night. I’m sprinkling in a few of the better ones today and with virtually no editing. Haiku is an ancient and beautiful form of Japanese poetry that consists of three lines of verse and a syllable count of five, seven, five. For example:

“OMG, LOLOL, GUYZ GUYZ GUYZ, GREAT IDEA! NISHIOKA IS JAPANESE AND HAIKU IS JAPANESE, SO LET’S MAKE FUN OF HIM IN THAT FORMAT! GONNA BE AWESOMELY CLEVER!”

Nishi from Far East
plays like a fourth grade kiddie
God we miss Hardy

@chadstenzel

Our Japanese friends
have abandoned Fort Myers
following Darvish

@shipleykid

Grounder through wickets
bad leg and sprained pinkie
Japan ball must rot

@TomPowersPP

Haiku? Really? Wonderful.

So is Powers going to do write rap verses for black players or country tunes for white players? I’m guessing no.

Apparently, Asians are the only athletes who can’t just be bad at sports. No, they have to be Asian athletes who are bad at sports.

Powers made sure to remind us of that every step of the way.

Tom Powers, Subtle
Lucky Subject Is Asian
Else, People Be Mad

@ChadMoriyama

Is Yu Darvish seriously coming to America with a picture of weed on his shirt?

No, probably not, as the Japanese maple leaf isn’t an uncommon logo.

Of course, if it turns out to be weed, it shouldn’t surprise anybody, nor should it be taken seriously.

Especially when one considers that Asians will put goddamn anything on their shirts.

As you probably already know by now, bidding on Yu Darvish ended just recently after the star right-hander was posted by the Nippon Ham Fighters a few days ago. I mention this because earlier today on Twitter I made a few statements about Yu Darvish and Asian players that generated some interesting discussion and I wanted to clarify my point.

All this started after reading article after article that lazily compared Yu Darvish with Daisuke Matsuzaka and Kei Igawa. I simply questioned whether any other player was subject to these generalizations based on his nationality, ethnicity, and race or whether any other players are lumped in with other busts and generalized to say that they all possess similar qualities because of their personal backgrounds.

—–

Through the course of the discussion, certain people managed to transform my desire to not lazily lump all Asian players into the same pool as being equal to saying that people should not criticize Asian players, which simply isn’t the case.

It’s the way people are criticizing Asian players that has me cringing.

I recognize that there are a ton of question marks that go into signing players from the region, question marks that simply don’t apply to American players. However, there are question marks for just about every other player on the market as well, it’s just that those players are analyzed as individuals and by their potential value, whereas it seems to be almost a requirement to compare prospective Asian players with current or past Asian players as if they are all the same.

It’s probably nothing to other people, but it’s honestly just awkward for me to read.

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Jon Paul Morosi – Fox Sports – 12/12

Robert Whiting, an author and expert on Japanese baseball, said he believes the Rangers and Yankees will submit posting bids on Darvish. But Whiting added: “If he signs with Texas, playing in that small park will not help him … I am afraid if Darvish goes to a hitter’s park, his game may suffer. Chan Ho Park was an ace at Dodger Stadium, not so good in Texas.”

I respect Robert Whiting for the work he has done on Japanese baseball, and I have enjoyed the books he has written, but this is just absurd.

What does Chan Ho Park having success with the Dodgers but not the Rangers have anything to do with Darvish? They are completely different and unrelated circumstances. The only thing relating them at all is the fact that they are both Asian, which is the only reason Park is even mentioned.

—

The park effects factor will have an affect how Darvish performs, but it will do so like it would for any other pitcher. That’s why we have statistics that normalize for things like league, park, and competition.

Relevant analysis would revolve around how Darvish’s stuff fits in different parks. What is his fly ball percentage? How many bats does he miss? Will the switch lead to a change in distribution? Which parks do those skills fit in?

But no, none of that is addressed in any article on Darvish that I see in the mainstream media, it’s all simply glossed over in favor of lazily throwing together anecdotal connection after anecdotal connection between pitchers who both happen to be Asian.

How is this acceptable? Ugh.

Tom Verducci – Sports Illustrated – 11/15

Said Rangers assistant GM Thad Levine, “The anecdotal assessment suggests starting pitchers have a two-year window of success followed by a rapid decline, followed thereafter by disappearance. Even a lot of the relievers have had success quickly, reaching a hot peak followed by a rapid decline.”

“Anecdotal”

Says it all.

When the Yankees signed Kei Igawa after the 2006 season, for instance, they relied on very few first-hand evaluations. Now the Yankees invest more time and resources in making sure they get multiple looks at NPB players.

Exactly. The Yankees didn’t do their due diligence on Igawa because they made a reactionary bid in response to losing out on Matsuzaka and since Darvish is Asian like they are, that’s Darvish’s fault.

Wait, what?

David Waldstein – The New York Times – 12/13

After the uneven results of Matsuzaka, Igawa and others, the bidding for Darvish is expected to be more restrained, perhaps $30 million to $50 million, and recently some people in baseball have projected that figure below $30 million.

Yes, we get it.

See above.

Jeff Passan – Yahoo! Sports – 12/8

Oh, and there’s the whole matter of pitching, the one question that will take years to answer. While the sample size remains tiny, the Japanese ace in the major leagues has had a short window of success. Hideo Nomo: two years. Matsuzaka: two years. Perhaps Hiroki Kuroda is breaking that trend, what with four consecutive solid seasons, but the skepticism remains.

See: Verducci, Tom

Tom Verducci – Sports Illustrated – 11/15

“You have some great examples of players who came here and starred,” said Dodgers GM Ned Colletti, “and some who came here and were average at best and some who were below average. Like it is with any prospect, it’s always something you have to look at on a case-by-case basis. One thing we do know is that the grind of our schedule is different, therefore there are different dynamics for a position player and for a pitcher.”

“Looking at players on a case-by-case basis and treating each Asian player that comes over as an individual? No, no, no, that just won’t do. It doesn’t fit my narrative.”

You know your argument is completely fucked when Ned Colletti is the voice of reason, right?

—–

Perhaps the saddest part is that the sample above is just taken from the top results on Google and what I found on MLB Trade Rumors. Basically, stuff like this is in almost every article about Darvish, so it wasn’t hard to find these examples at all.

So what’s the point?

The point is that there should absolutely be questions asked about Yu Darvish, but those questions should be asked about Yu Darvish the pitcher, not about Yu Darvish the Japanese pitcher or Yu Darvish the Asian pitcher, and certainly not about how Daisuke Matsuzaka and Kei Igawa relate to him.

Intellectually lazy leaps in logic always bother me, but I felt the need to point this out because it seems nobody ever has a problem when people do it in regards to Asian players (like this). Let’s be honest, similar comparisons would never be made so overtly and so shamelessly if we were talking about Black or Latino players because people would lose their jobs over it.

—–

Originally, I was planning on writing an article about how Japanese players who come over through the posting system are generally overvalued because it’s akin to getting a prospect except they aren’t team controlled. Of course, the difference between my planned analysis and what is currently happening on the journalism landscape is that I would have actually done my homework and looked at each case as individual results instead of lumping them all into one category and making wide ranging generalizations.

By far the most common comparison is between Yu Darvish and Daisuke Matsuzaka, which is appropriate for the point I’m trying to make because even a cursory comparison of the two would reveal totally different pitchers, personalities, and backgrounds.

Ample reason to see them and analyze them as individuals.

But hey, why do research when you can just be lazy, right?

I was about to take a nap today when I saw that MLB Trade Rumors had picked Jason Kubel to sign with the Dodgers. I made my way to FanGraphs to see if I could make a post basically laughing at Ned Colletti repeating his past mistakes of bringing in a veteran outfielder to block a talented youngster.

On my way there though, I saw two articles on FanGraphs about Yu Darvish and decided to click-through to see what they thought, because I love to get their take on things.

Well in an article called “Darvish Is Not Daisuke” by Eno Sarris, I was amused at the first justification for why they aren’t comparable.

The first difference might seem irrelevant at first: Darvish is not only Japanese — he’s also half Iranian. The reason this is relevant is not that Iranian people are better at baseball. The point is that Darvish would be the tallest pitcher to make the jump from Nippon Professional Baseball to Major League Baseball. At 6-foot-5, he’s five inches taller than Matsuzaka. The average Iranian male is 5-foot-8.6 and the average Japanese male is 5-foot-7.8 (American males are 5-foot-9.2 on average), so it might have taken a little genetic help to produce a Japanese pitcher this tall. Darvish is also 220 pounds, but could have the frame to add more. He added 20 pounds this year.

Regardless of how it was intended, the passage absolutely reads as if it were meant to say, “Good thing Yu Darvish is mixed so he can be tall and throw hard unlike the rest of the Japanese pitchers because LOL AZNS ARE SHORT LOL“.

Honestly, I wasn’t offended by this or anything, but I just found it hilarious how nonchalantly ethnic/racial genetic differences were thrown into the mix as if it were legitimate and relevant analysis.

I generally don’t use this site to complain about stereotypes or racism, because I honestly can’t be fucked enough to care, but I do enjoy calling it out when I see it. Hell, if for no other reason than because it entertains me to no end.

Overall, I’m used to this type of shit as it happens so commonly with Asians and Asian Americans because nobody honestly gives a shit about offending us, but it did give me pause and ended up turning my face into this:

Regardless, it’s quite the interesting direction for FanGraphs to go, and I anxiously await future articles analyzing Asian baseball players. I would like to start:

“Daisuke Matsuzaka’s inability to control the strike zone doomed him in America, as his slanted eyes prevented him from seeing the strike zone with the same clarity as pitchers of other races. I’m not saying it matters FOR SURE, but it’s unfortunate that he lost the genetic lottery by being born Japanese, or he might have been born with bigger eyes and have better control. Genetically speaking. Genetics.”

Feel free to contribute examples of your own, as I’m sure there are many ways to analyze players using ethnic and racial genetic differences.

—–

All jokes aside, what does the passage even statistically tell you?

The average Iranian male is 0.8 inches taller than the average Japanese male (assuming that’s true), so Yu Darvish being mixed Iranian-Japanese probably affected his chances of being a 6’5″ outlier enough to make it a lead point on why he’s not similar to Daisuke Matsuzaka?

Commenters on the article are predictably defending the passage and are saying that the critics are missing the point, but isn’t the article itself hilariously missing the point when the passage serves absolutely no purpose since it provides no evidence that has any statistical value whatsoever?

Like I understand if it was proven that Iranians have a statistically significant amount of people who are taller than 6’4″ when compared with the Japanese, but I struggle to see a point in mentioning an average difference of less than an inch.

—

All I’m saying is that if the article had stated Hiroki Kuroda was more likely than Rubby De La Rosa to stay out of trouble off the field and succeed in pressure situations because Japanese score higher on IQ tests than Dominicans, I doubt it gets pushed.

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Kei Igawa Portrait