Some Recent Transactions

The 2012 roster is starting to take shape, no surprises at this point, except that Wei-Ying Chen has yet to sign with a MLB team.  I would expect that to happen sometime this month.  Meanwhile Chunichi management has stated that they are willing to wait on him as long as necessary.

Here are some other moves:

Blanco, Nelson and Soto will all return on 1-yr extensions.  There was an article a month or two back suggesting they all of these guys were unsure if they would return for 2012.  Definitely good news!

Well deserved pay raises for Yoshimi (120 M yen) and Asao (125 M yen)

Pay cut for Kazuhiro Wada

Takeshi Yamasaki joins the team on a one year deal.  He has mentioned in interviews that he expects to compete for the first base job.  Very unlikely that he wins that spot.

Masaaki Koike will not return as he signed with the Bay Stars.  Not a big loss, but he did have a great performance in Game 1 of last year`s Japan Series.

Got most of this info from Yakyubaka

Happy New Year!

I am currently celebrating the new year in Aichi, Japan with my family and Dragons-loving relatives, so now seems to be a good time to start a blog dedicated to the Dragons.  There does not appear to be any existing Dragons fan blogs in English, at least not any I have found, so I've decided to start this up.  I don't claim to be an expert on Japanese Baseball, there are some links to sites and blogs on the right from people that have followed the NPB much longer than I have. But every fan has a right to their opinion and I'm planning on sharing some of mine, as well as trying to keep up with the current events of the team and I'm sure a few off-topic (but probably baseball or Japan related) posts as well.  I would also like to share what resources I have found for watching games online or for following the team and the league in general, and hope readers will share what the have found as well.  Here is a little about me:

I will be returning soon to my home near Seattle.  I have lived in various parts of Washington State my whole life, so obviously I follow the Dragons from a great distance, usually from what I can watch or read online or from videos sent from my relatives in Japan.  I have been rooting for Chunichi since 2005 and been to several NPB games, including ones in Nagoya and Osaka.  Some of my favorite Dragons' players include Kenshin Kawakami, Atsushi Fujii and Motonobu Tanishige.

2012 is looking pretty unpredictable so far, with a new coaching regime and a team coming off a year when most of the hitters underperformed and most of the pitchers overperfromed.  I'm just hoping that 2012 will be as unpredicably good as 2011 was!