June 8 , 2020

Ernesto de la Torriente, La Bola Rápida

On the face of it had to be a blunder. Why else would a team with only $4.5 million blow the second pick of the draft on a guy they knew was not signing for anything less than $5 million? Well that’s exactly what Edo just did in the final LRS draft. Perhaps it was just management’s way of stating this was the end of baseball in Kyoto for the club.

On the flip side, what was he thinking? He being Masakado ‘Stubblebeard’ Kato? Here’s a guy who with top level taken who’s going to play in the bigs, wildly popular with the fans, signed by a team with a left fielder who’s batting a buck sixty two, yes only .162 AVG, who says in effect “Nahhhh, I’d rather play somewhere else.” Maybe he’s allergic to pennants.

The rap sheet says he’s smart guy. Maybe he knows something about the club the rest of us don’t.

It’s easy enough to question the club’s judgement these days. Hometown hero Morihiro Nakamura keeps waking up to find his name on the lineup card every day. He must think have to pinch himself every day to ensure he’s not dreaming. We al know what he’s done. It’s what he’s doing that’s the issue.

Nakamura is the guy batting .162 in LF for Edo. He’s actually tied for 3^rd on the club HR chart, but remember this is Edo we’re talking about. When your talking about Edo and power in the same sentence think of that old science fair exhibit with the lemon powered lightbulb. You get the idea.

The club had run the numbers they tell me and said that his HR/AB numbers were only slightly down. With a healthy  number of AB he could really help the club they opined. Obviously that’s not proving to be the case. Barring a huge turnaround he’ll have plenty of time to see the sights of Havana in the final year of his contract in 2021 after the club moves up to PEBA baseball.

Team owner ‘Speedy’ Hildreth dismisses all of this with a wave. I recently had a chance to speak to him.

“Cigar?”, he offers me a perfectly wrapped Figurado. “He plays because he is Morihiro effin’ Nakamura. Period. You don’t sit a guy like that in the final season of the league. Career-wise, he’s running at 0.08 HR/AB. This club desperately needs HRs. Sure he seems on the downside, but we ran the numbers and figured with the trend he’d be good for 0.05 HR/AB if we could ensure he’s get around 400 AB and we’d get 20 more dingers.. So far this year he’s got 7 HR in 167 AB or 0.042 HR/AB,  pretty close to where figured. At 0.05 he have hit 1 more HR. We can afford to spot the man one home run at this point. Besides he puts butts in the seats.”

I asked him about the draft and the fiasco with Kato.

“Frankly I goofed” , he admitted.

Apparently my look of surprise at this candor was mistaken for something else.

“Yeah I know, right? Who wouldn’t want to play for Edo? We were as shocked as you to hear this. He’s a good kid who’s obviously getting some bad advice. He’ll turn up somewhere eventually. This will give us the opportunity to bag several other guys who can contribute and we’ll end up saving some cash in the long run. Frankly I’m getting tired of these greedy youngsters anyway. They’ve lost their love of the game.”

The phone rings and I can hear a distinctly Latin cadence in the voice on the far end.

“Puede batear? ¡un momento, por favor…..I gotta take this. Thanks for coming by. They’ve got some good coffee on the field level kiosk today.”

Stopping for a coffee on my way out of the stadium I see a lone figure taking batting practice in the field still glistening in the morning dew. There’s no mistaking who it is. Perhaps he will turn it around. Sure would be nice to get one last glimpse of that magic.