Monday, April 23, 2007

Come back Boriskov!

Doesn't that even sound stupid? Come back Boriskov? It sounds like something Sylvester Stallone would star in. Yet, like Obi Wan, Boriskov was my only hope.

Last year, I started religiously following Japanese Baseball. Finding the scores was easy enough, and I can still do that. The problem is the stats. Boriskov's now deceased geocities page was the only place on the internet that had the stats in English, and without him, I felt completely lost. You may notice one sidebar link that still works and has some stats for my Hanshin Tigers, the Tigers Today page, which is probably the first website in history dedicated to how well Ryan Vogelsong and Esteban Yan are doing.

The closest thing we have is JapanBaseball.com's rudimentary stats page. I applaud the moderator (who I think goes by michaelbaystars) for taking this measure, but it still leaves out so much context. Weak hitters, Weak pitchers. I can't tell these things from a leaderboard. All I can tell is that Hanshin has struggled early to find consistent pitching and that Kanemoto is a badass. They also have a message board, which led to this post by Baseball Prospectus SABR Japan guy Mike Plugh:


He replied to me. Very cryptic and grim. It sounded like something terrible has happened, but I didn't pry. I don't think he's planning to resurface anytime soon unfortunately. I send my prayers out to him for whatever he's dealing with.


So I had been planning a huge analysis, predictions; everything. For a long time now. But without the stats, it's kinda meaningless, eh? You'll just have to settle for the fun factoid that on this day in 2003, Shingo Takatsu set the NPB saves record. Because all I can look up is past events.

Come back Borisov!

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