Japanese Baseball NPB Draft Analysis - Team Analysis - Yokohama BayStars
ByTeam Analysis - Yokohama BayStars 
pitching out of 12 teams 12th record 51-93
hitting out of 12 teams 8th placed 6th of 6
pitching potential D draft grade B
hitting potential C
The Yokohama BayStars are horrible. Their pitching ranks last in all of baseball and the line-up has a few over-the-hill hitters and little potential.
Hitting: with a minimum of 150 at bats, Yokohama has only one player (Seiichi Ichikawa) who ranks in the top 50 for batting average and the highest RBI hitter for Yokohama (Shuichi Murata) ranks 28th in Japanese baseball with only 69.
The pitching is worse, Yokohama has only two pitchers (Randolph, Sanada) with over 40 innings pitched in the top 50 for ERA and only one pitcher on the staff (Randolph) with less than 6 hits per nine innings.
The BayStars could go anywhere in this draft because there are so many holes to fill. They took local Yokohama High School infielder Yoshitomo Tsutsugo with their first pick. A great player on defense and offense who is young and good enough to play today. With their other picks Yokohama took needed talent at pitcher with some of the picks ready to play and some works in progress. Overall, Yokohama helped themselves by getting arguably the best non-pitching player in the draft and loading up on pitching potential. Tsutsugo is a special talent.
Brandon Siefken has covered Japanese pro and amateur baseball since 1991. He is currently an intern for a Major League Baseball team and has been quoted in Bloomberg, The New York Times and other publications regarding Japanese baseball. Brandon is a regular writer for Bob Bavasi’s JapanBall.com site and has authored several articles including “The Kuroda Index” and “Yu Darvish: A 315 Pitch Scouting Report.” Each year Brandon publishes the “Japan Baseball News Weekly” newsletter with updated weekly stats for every player from April to October. Brandon can be contacted at brandon@japanball.com.
