Last week, I looked at the Asian pitchers and how they’ve started Spring Training, so this week I’ll look at the hitters and how they’re leading off the season. We lost Kenji Johjima in the offseason, of course, and there weren’t any position player imports—these kinds of imports are a rarity in any year—but these [...]

Greetings from your friendly editor. Funny story about the Milwaukee Brewers. When I was a kid, my cousin and I realized the Brewers “glove” logo was actually an M and a B. We were amazed. What’s that have to do with this preview? Well, nothing. Let’s hand this thing over to Michael Street… Read on [...]

There are quite a few Asian stories for the upcoming season—a topic for an upcoming column—but many of them focus on the fate of Japanese pitchers in 2010. Some of those questions were answered with the opening of Spring Training, and I’ll run down a few of them here.
Daisuke Matsuzaka lost most of last season [...]

A flight from Cleveland to Arizona can be tough on the internal clock so we’ll blame the jet lag for the 11th hour posting of Michael Street’s Diamondbacks preview. The BDD editing room is on the East Coast so for all of you out West, this one came in prime time. As for Arizona, they [...]

All too often, “Asian baseball player” translates as “Japanese baseball player,” even in my mind. But there’s plenty of talent from other Asian countries, and Chan Ho Park and Chien-Ming Wang are excellent representatives of South Korea and Taiwan, respectively. In fact, until Fu-te Ni comes into his own as a reliever (and pitches for [...]

Michael Street has been bringing some great content to BDD in his time here. It’s no wonder he’s caught on at Heater and The Hardball Times thanks to his solid work at Baseball Daily Digest. Our latest featured writer gives his responses to 20 Questions…
How did you begin writing for Baseball Daily Digest?
I answered Joe’s [...]

Last year, the New York Mets signed Ken Takahashi, a 40-year-old lefty from Japan they used as a starter and reliever; in the offseason, Takahashi elected to return to Japan. So they’ve signed another lefty named Takahashi to replace him.
OK, that’s an oversimplification, but it is funny.
This Takahashi’s name is Hisanori, and he’s younger, with [...]

A few smaller Asian stories from around baseball emerged this week, so I’m collecting them in an array of pleasing bite-sized pieces of dim sum. I caught some flak last time around for calling a Pacific Perspectives column “dim sum” (a Chinese dish), then featuring only Japanese players. Well, never fear—this column represents a real [...]

So Taguchi announced this week that he would be returning to Japan to finish his career there, ending the MLB time of a modest player who has been eclipsed by larger names but has still managed to leave his mark.
Taguchi played with the Orix Blue Wave from 1992-2001, hitting just .277/.333/.387 overall, with 630 runs [...]

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, I want to take a look at a different racial pioneer, and the best book out there about him. Wally Yonamine was actually a pioneer in two countries, in America and Japan, although I’d bet my eyeteeth very few readers (even the infinitely more knowledgeable ones here [...]