Japanese Baseball NPB Draft Analysis - Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles
ByTeam Analysis - Rakuten Golden Eagles 
pitching out of 12 teams 2nd record 70-66-1
hitting out of 12 teams 6th placed 2nd of 6
pitching potential A draft grade C
hitting potential C
The Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles have arguably the best 1-2 pitchers in the rotation in Masahiro Tanaka and Hisashi Iwakuma. Both are top level pitchers in NPB. In 2009 the closer role was split between Aoyama and Fukumori, with Fukumori poised to take over the role full time in 2010. Darrell Rasner and Ryohei Isaka fill out the rotation and middle relief duty goes to Kanehisa Arime. Arime is a not so glaring hole to fill. On the hitting side, 1B is a hole that needs to be filled but no other weak links to speak of. Outfiled is a position that eventually could be a potential hole to fill. Rakuten picked up pitchers, and infielder and a catcher in the draft, filling potential holes nicely, but I have a problem with who they selected. First round pick pitcher Kenji Tomura from Rikkio University is wild and has spurts of horrible innings. He does have experience playing against top-level college competition, but he is erratic and inconsistent. The other picks were solid but not outstanding. I like the picking up of catcher Shota Koseki to back up the young and talented Motohiro Shima.
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” ( http://www.japanbaseballnews.com/?page_id=1543 ) with updated weekly stats for every player from April to October. Brandon can be contacted at brandon@japanball.com.
