3/3/2012: Fukuoka, Japan – Fushigi Yugi GM Gregory Abcarian reflected on his first Winter Meetings experience today.  He went into the December meetings with very little expectations, thinking he would just be observing.  Well, he was wrong.  He left the meetings with new players, less salary and a whole new outlook on the way to run the organization.

“I have to say I was overwhelmed at first with the meetings, but in the end it turned out to be a great experience.  We made a few trades, which I wasn’t expecting to do.  Got to build relationships with other owners and just get a feel of how things run in this league,” said Abcarian.

In his first trade ever in the LRS, Gregory traded his #2 and #6 round picks this year to the Lupin Cliff Hangers in exchange for RF/LF Sadaktake “Clam” Chouda.  The price might have been high for Clam, but after last season when injuries happened in the OF and there were no decent backups, this had to be addressed.  Clam is expected to start in LF, with Ryunosuke Niski headed back to bench.  He’ll join Ho Kim to give the Warriors a solid backup OF.

The next trade of was very unexpected because Teruo Kichida makes $3,336,500 this year and wasn’t expected to garner any interest.  When the C-Warriors got an offer from the Kawaguchi Transmitters for catcher Azumamaro Fujita, they jumped all over it.  Azumamaro is a good prospect who played a little bit in the LRS last season and should be playing for the C-Warriors and their AAA team.

With the hole created with Kichida traded, the team traded their #8 round pick to the Lupin Cliff Hangers for IF Takeo Suzuki.  Takeo isn’t known for much except being one of if not the skinniest guys (139 lbs., 6’2”) in baseball.  He will serve as the backup utility man this season along with Noriaki Kobayashi, and the team will pray that they don’t have any injuries in the infield.

Word on the street is that the team will be on a strict budget the rest of the year and are only looking to sign players to minor league contracts.