As is often the case with a Thursday day game, there aren’t as many stories out there as those quotas get filled by game previews and recaps. Even with that, Jaylon Thompson profiled Michael Massey and his newfound positional flexibility:

I missed this little episode the other night, but Pete Grathoff has us covered:

I don’t know if I’ve ever linked to the Beacon before. In this story, Josh Merchant writes about the cost of the proposed stadium:

In another first, here’s an article from Vine Street Brewing by Kemet Coleman. I mean, it’s more a blog post, but it fits with the article above. This one talks about how the stadium is not near 18th and Vine and, as such, the city should invest resources there, as well.

Blog Time!

Craig Brown wrote about Wednesday’s game at Into the Fountains:

Patrick Glancy of Powder Blue Nostalgia is writing a companion blog, Powder Blue Pulp:

Blog Roundup:

• Darin Watson at U.L.’s Toothpick: This Date In Royals History–1976 Edition: April 30 – Good news: the Royals get to play a game! Bad news: it’s a loss to the Yankees.

• Jeff Wayman at The Diamond Chronicles: Royals GBU – The good, bad, and ugly from a weekend sweep of the Angels

• Jacob Milham at KOK: Royals’ recent surge is bringing out the MVP Bobby Witt Jr. fans have been waiting for

• Caleb Moody at KOK: Dual Royals elbow surgeries take aim at KC’s pitching depth stockpile

Since we didn’t have a lot of official Royals stories or blogs, how about some stories from around the MLB to tide you over?

At The Athletic ($), Evan Drellich writes that the MLB labor talks are beginning soon. Spoiler: don’t expect much more than posturing this early.

NBC Sports baseball announcer Jason Benetti is a trailblazer:

While we’re talking announcers, how about this headline: “MLB directs Cleveland Guardians to adjust broadcast team”?

Finally, many members of the USA Olympic figure skating team threw out first pitches at the Mets game on Thursday. The video… well, it’s something.

Yeah, I’m a little behind. It’s already May and we’re just now finishing up the Asia baseball previews. Last week we did the KBO and a couple of weeks before that was the CPBL.

NPB – Nippon Professional Baseball

Country: Japan

Opening Day:March 27

Former Royals: There always seem to be somewhere between a half dozen to dozen former Royals in the NPB. This year finds Albert Abreu (Chunichi Dragons), Orlando Calixte (Chunichi Dragons), Austin Cox (Yokohama Bay Stars), Taylor Hearn (Hiroshima Carp), Sam Long (Chiba Lotte Marines), Andrés Machado (Orix Buffaloes), and Franmil Reyes (Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters). Remember former Royals farmhand Cam Devanney? Some people were worried when he was traded to the Pirates last year in the Adam Frazier trade. He’s on the Hanshin Tigers this year.

International Players: Two that jump out to me are former Twin Miguel Sano and former Pirate Gregory Polanco. There’s a few MLB journeymen like Jose Ruiz, Domingo Santana, José Ureña, and Luke Voit. Those guys played for about 20 times combined. From the above Royals list, Heran, Long, and Reyes all played 5 or more years in MLB. And there’s a bunch of other (non-Royal) players with 5+ years in MLB: José Castillo, Roansy Contreras, Bobby Dalbec, Rafael Dolis, Spencer Howard, Luis Perdomo, José Quijada, and Dayán Viciedo. Yes, that’s the same Dayán Viciedo, whose last game in the MLB was the Royals’ season-ending 89th win in 2014. He’s spent the last 11 years in the NPB where he’s a career .287 hitter with 141 home runs. I’ve used this list from JapanBall the last couple of years and it appears to be up to date-ish.

Last Season: There were 3 dominant teams in the league last season. The Hanshin Tigers won the Central League by 13 games, led by Central League MVP Teruaki Sato (.277/.345/.579 with 40 HR and 102 RBI). In the Pacific League, the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks and Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters battled for supremacy with the Hawks winning the league by 4.5 games. The Hawks pitching staff was anchored by Pacific League MVP Liván Moinelo (12-3; 1.46 ERA; 172K in 167.0 IP), the first Cuban in NPB history to win MVP. This battle continued in the playoffs as the two met in the Final stage (think LCS). The Hawks came in with a 1-0 lead by virtue of having the better regular-season record and won the first two games, giving them a commanding 3-0 lead. However, the Fighters fought back, winning the next 3. But series MVP Moinelo shut them down in the deciding game. The Tigers advanced easily to the Japan Series but lost to the Hawks in a gentleman’s sweep. Hotaka Yamakawa won the MVP, hitting home runs in games 2, 3, and 4. Sato won the Fighting Spirit Award (think: MVP for losing team).

Rooting Interest: In 2020, both Nori Aoki and Alcides Escobar were on the 2020 Tokyo Yakult Swallows, so our rooting interest was obvious. This was amplified by the fact that they hadn’t won a Japan Series since 2001, though they had been to a few playoffs since. But then, Munetaka Murakami happened. He burst onto the scene with 36 HR in 2019, followed by 28, 39, 56(!), 31, 33, and 22 last season. They won the Japan Series in 2021 and a Central League pennant in 2022, his MVP year. Last year, he only played 56 games due to injury and the team finished in last place. Now Murakami plays for the White Sox and already has double-digit home runs. I mean, if they can have him and still play last-place ball, maybe they’ve gone back to being the team for us, even with no Royals.

World Baseball Classic: The USA was the betting favorite in the WBC but Japan was the defending champion and had the second best odds. They’re the only team to win more than once, winning in 2006, 2009, and 2023 and have never finished below third. They were a sparkling 4-0 in group play with dominating wins against Taiwan (13-0) and Czechia (9-0) mixed in with comeback wins against Korea (8-6) and Australia (4-3).

Being the Pool C 1st place time lined them up with the 2nd place team from Pool D, Venezuela. After Ronald Acuna Jr homered to lead off the game for Venezuela, Shohei Ohtani tied the game with his 3rd home run of the WBC. Venezuela scored again in the 2nd. But Japan answered in the 3rd with an RBI double by the aforementioned Sato and a 3-run homer by (Hanshin) Tigers OF Shota Morishita. But then Maikel Garcia hit a 2-run homer in the 5th and Wilyer Abreu hit a 3-run homer in the 6th. Samurai Japan was stunningly bounced in the quarterfinals and Venezuela went on to win the title.

Random Nuggets:

• Sadly, there don’t appear to be any easily accessible English games for the NPB. The NPB Subreddit has a section in their FAQ about watching games internationally, but I think it’s falling out of date. It takes a lot of work with different services, VPNs, and subscriptions, so it’s not ideal. Pacific League TV’s YouTube channel has an English game every once in a while.

• In this space last year, we were lamenting how Sasaki went to the Dodgers, adding to their already bloated payroll, and were lamenting which team Murakami would go to. However, his injury last year scared a lot of teams off and he “only” signed for 2/$34M with the White Sox, which is proving to be a bargain. Saitama Seibu Lions pitcher Tatsuya Imai signed with the Houston Astros for 3/$54M. Yomiuri Giants Infielder Kazuma Okamoto signd with Toronto for 4/$60M. Remember former Royal Foster Griffin? He’s also been with the Giants the past couple of seasons and came back to MLB, signing with the Washington Nationals.

• Before the season, the Japan Times had their previews up for the Central League and Pacific League. Here’s what they had to say about our Swallows, who they predicted as last in the Central League:

• The aforementioned previews predicted the following league standings. Central League: Hanshin Tigers, Yokohama DeNA BayStars, Yomiuri Giants, Chunichi Dragons, Hiroshima Toyo Carp, Tokyo Yakult Swallows

• Pacific League: Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters, Fukuoka Softbank Hawks, Orix Buffaloes, Saitama Seibu Lions, Chiba Lotte Marines, Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles.

Links:

• https://npb.jp/eng/ – The Official NPB site has some parts translated into English

• https://www.reddit.com/r/NPB/ – NPB Reddit

• https://www.reddit.com/r/NPB/wiki/index/#wiki_news_links – The NPB Reddit wiki lists a number of other sites

• https://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/baseball/ – Japan Times is (per wiki) “Japan’s largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper”

The last couple of weeks, we’ve gone the NES route. How about a new game?

I’ll let Lucas M. Thomas’s review at IGN start us out:

There were a handful of games on the NES with cutscenes, but this is perhaps the most memorable.

Ninja Gaiden was a classic. It played fast and smooth. I love that Wiki links to an academic paper about video game design trade-offs in talking about why Ninja Gaiden worked so well:

The wall jumping was fun. The weapons were unique. Oh, and the difficulty. It wasn’t on the level of Battletoads or the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – it wasn’t frustratingly bad. But it was hard. The level designs were generally good – difficult, but not completely unforgiving.

Just writing about it makes me want to pick it back up, if only for an hour before I get frustrated with it.

Here’s that intro movie: