The 2019 regular season has officially ended and the Kure Arsenal have finished with a 53-91 record, good for 5^th in the Shining Star Group and no playoffs. Coming into the year, most fans didn’t know what to expect, they had won 74 games the year before, but didn’t make any offseason moves and that led to the firing of the then GM.

It was almost a month into the season when Kure found a replacement GM, Donald Walters. He made a couple quick moves to try and steer the team to victory and win some fan support, but they fizzled out and so did any chance at a winning season. Walters was left with two choices; Try and piece together a championship team, or rebuild and win for a long time?

Walters chose the latter and has done a darn good job thus far, acquiring many young talents and high draft picks. Currently, Kure owns 7 picks in the first 3 rounds of the draft, but will look to get that to 10 by draft time next year. How can Walters do that? Well, there are some solid pieces still left here in Kure, from the likes of 1B Nobuo Ota, SP Sakutaro Ishida, and RF Sadao Kamida. All of them will most likely be getting their paychecks from another organization next year.  Walters has openly stated that he would prefer picks over prospects, but both are welcome as the Arsenal look to the future.

He wants draft picks because the 2020 draft class is shaping up to be the deepest in LRS history, with some very good talent all throughout. With the regular season over, the draft order has been set, Kure possess’ one first round, four second round, and two third round selections. If you throw in the fourth and fifth round picks they have, that’s 11 picks eligible for signing bonuses. Kure is going to need some cash to sign those guys, so expect Walters to make some type of move.

With 11 picks, Kure should be able to find 11 guys with LRS potential, in theory. Where do they need the help the most? Well, Kure has a couple good young players in their organization that should help build the foundation for the new look Arsenal. They are as follows:

1B Hyobe Ojima (LRS)

2B Yeong-hun Kim (AAA-ETA: 2021)

3B Tokimasa Sugiyama (A-ETA: 2021)

SS Hirohisa Inoue (LRS)

LF Masayuki Tada (LRS)

CF Ton Iwamoto (LRS)

RF Namboku Ikarashi (A- ETA: 2023)

2B Yoshinaka Otsuka (AAA- ETA: 2021)

SS Ikki Fujii (A-ETA: 2021)

CF Hirohisa Matsumoto (LRS)

From that list, you’ll notice that two very important items are missing, a catcher and PITCHING! Kure doesn’t have a single arm capable of performing on a regular basis at the LRS level in their organization. It is very possible that Walters could take 10 arms and a catcher, just because it would help the team tremendously in the coming years. Another possibility, Walters packages something together and moves up in the first round to grab a superstar.

Whatever he does, we’ll all go with it, because he hasn’t done a thing yet for us not to trust him and hopefully he’ll bring the winning back to Kure for a long time.

Taro Yamagata, ABP Japan- Kure Arsenal