Japanese Baseball

I am a fan of just about every form of baseball. I love college baseball, I love the minors, I love the majors and I love the high school game. So it follows that I probably love the Japanese leagues. This is true. My fascination is a little extreme, as I've tried to find out the EqA's of every player in the league. Of course the exact formula's aren't realesed but what is released is very very close and the park factors are not released exactly either. Still, I've attempted to do them. To do this the first thing I needed were the actual stats from NBP. Luckily, Sergei Borisov's excellent site had just about everything I needed. Secondly I needed park factors for each team, I did this using the scores from the last three years. I then calculated the park factor the same way that Baseball-Reference calculate's their's. And here they are:

.8676 Yomiuri Giants
.8727 Chunichi Dragons
.8861 Fukuoka Softbank Hawks
.8900 Chiba Lotte Marines
.9299 Hanshin Tigers
.9864 Seibu Lions
.9870 Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters
1.0002 Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles
1.0158 Orix Buffaloes
1.1193 Yokohama BayStars
1.1309 Hiroshima Toyo Carp
1.1694 Tokyo Yakult Swallows

These aren't exactly what I had expected. The Tokyo Dome is supposed to be a hitters park, but the Giants have the lowest run factor. There are a few tough things here that have to be noted. First of all most of the teams play 10-15 'home' games at small sites across the country. These fields range from high school fields to everything. So this is probably a factor in some of the park factors. Secondly, The Golden Eagles have existed for just two years, so their factor is a two year park factor. Finally, the Orix BlueWave and the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes merged after 2004. The new team, the Orix Buffaloes play half of their home games at the Osaka Dome and half of them at Skymark Stadium. So I split averaged the two factors from 2004 and included as one park factor.

After I got this I was ready to calculate their EqA's. I used the raw EqA formula found at Baseball Prospectus' site and the way I used the run factor was when I had to calculate the average equivalent runs in the set plate appearances, I just mutiplied half of the runs time the park factor because only half of the games are played there. And then I just did what was normal and this would be the Top 20:

.350 Kosuke Fukudome, Dragons
.335 Seung-Yeop Lee, Giants
.331 Nobuhiko Matsunaka, Hawks
.325 Tyrone Woods, Dragons
.322 Michihiro Ogasawara, Fighters
.318 Alex Cabrera, Lions
.310 Tomoaki Kanemoto, Tigers
.309 Alex Fernandez, Eagles
.304 Kazuhiro Wada, Lions
.303 Hiroyuki Nakajima, Lions

Four of the players were in Japan's WBC starting lineup. Seung-Yeop Lee was the big man in South Korea's and Alex Cabrera was supposed to be on Venezuela's but was not. Kosuke Fukudome has been one of the best players in Japan for awhile now. In 2001 it was calculated that the Japan to US factor was between .92 and .93 which would place Fukudome's EqA in the .320-.325 range - roughly equivalent to Derek Jeter. His reputation is that he's an excellent defensive centerfielder as well, so I guess the best comparison is probably Grady Sizemore. You can make a case for Fukudome being the best centerfielder on the planet if you wanted. He's eligible to come stateside after 2007, and has expressed he is interested in the past.

Lee's a free agent after the season and has had a monster season this year. He could generate quite the interest from some American League teams who are looking for a hybrid designated hitter first baseman. He has taken his excellent WBC performance and increased his stock so much. However I am not sure how much of an impact he will make. I could see him signing with the Angels who need offense no matter what. He could also wind up in Los Angeles or Seattle. I could even see Billy Beane getting in the bidding if he is priced low enough.

Another guy who is coming over soon is Akinori Iwamura. Iwamura is not listed in the top 10 as he currently sits 13th with a .300 EqA. He's a third basemen with good power and good defense. I am not sure if his game well translate near the .925 level as he strikes out a lot and does not have a lot of patience. Those are the things that burned Kaz Matsui. Still the Swallows are posting him after the season and a MLB comparison for him might be a Russell Branyan lite. He has power but could pile on the strikeouts. Remember these equivalent averages do not factor in position scarcity. Hiroyuki Nakajima would get a huge bonus here as would #18 Tsuyoshi Nishioka as they are shortstops - and in Nishioka's case masterful defensively.