WBC Players to Watch

The impending WBC will give baseball fans all over the world a chance to see players from Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) that don’t normally get much exposure outside of Japan. Here are my top five NPB’ers to watch:

• Yu Darvish – Darvish is the best-known player in NPB and will obviously be a center of attention during this year’s WBC. He’s obviously a special talent, but how well will he perform under WBC pressure? He struggled against Cuba in the Olympics last year, and in his WBC warm-up appearances this year. To whett your apettites, here’s some footage of him pitching in last year’s post-season.
• Kyuji Fujikawa – Fujikawa was the first player I wrote about on npbtracker.com. The fireballing reliever struck out 90 of the 249 batters he faced last year and is set to be Japan’s closer.
• Norichika Aoki — Japan’s top hitter and a great defensive outfielder. A new group of fans will enjoy watching him.
• Munenori Kawasaki – Baseball America ranked him among the top five prospects in the 2006 Classic, and he’s back for the 2009 version. Kawasaki is a speedy slap hitter who can play all over the infield.
• Michihiro Ogasawara — expected to be Japan’s starting first baseman, Ogasawara has a long, distinctive swing that’s optimized for mashing off-speed stuff.

And two bonus MLB’ers:

• Ichiro — yeah, everyone knows Ichiro but he’s got his “let’s kick some NL ass!” x10 All-Star game face on. Ichiro is in a defined leadership role with this team and it’ll be interesting to see how he does.
• Daisuke Matsuzaka – everyone knows Dice-K too, but the WBC is going to add workload to a guy that ran out of steam in 2007, and had durability issues last year. He went 17-5 with a 2.13 era in 186 1/3 innings after pitching in the WBC in ‘06, how will he fare this year?

Topics: Daisuke Matsuzaka, Ichiro, Kyuji Fujikawa, Michihiro Ogasawara, Munenori Kawasaki, Norichika Aoki, Yu Darvish

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