Two Talkin’ Torakichi: Episode 002

Tora (虎) = Tiger

Kichi (キチ) = short for kichigai (気違い) = lunatic

We are…

Episode 002: What Else? Coronavirus on the Mind

Good chatting with you again, man. Thanks for taking the time! Boy, things sure have changed in the past month, since we last did this! How’s everything in Dubai?

Always a pleasure, T-Ray! Here things are pretty much the same as everywhere else, I assume. Working from home for 2 weeks already and the plan is to stick with home office for at least 1 month more. Right now, a complete sterilization of the city is being conducted and we’re in a complete lockdown for the next 48h. Just made sure to resupply with all my favorite Japanese goods (and all the basic stuff too), at least for the weekend. What about you man? How’s things on your side?

There have been no shutdowns in Japan, outside of the “requests” that some local governments are making on people’s “non-urgent” outings. I really think the world is taking this seriously but worry that this country needs to smarten up before things get way out of hand. Anyways, let’s talk Tigers, shall we? I suppose we can start with the Fujinami news. Poor kid. I don’t know how much of this can be nailed on him, or on the team, or on plain dumb bad luck… but they say there were 12 people out for a meal together on March 14, and that is probably where he got it. Pretty bad decision, no matter how you look at it.

I hear you. I’ve been following the situation in Japan closely and it seems that now that they postponed the Olympics, everything has come to the surface. Hope it’s not too late. But hey, let’s talk Tigers and the “F” kid hehehe. Man, don’t know about you but in my mind, I always had this thing that, since they started this closed doors thing, they would double the care on how to proceed with outings, meetings and whatever the staff and the players would do outside the clubhouse if anything at all! From my understanding, your life should be the clubhouse and your home and that’s it! The idea of secluding the players from crowds was to ensure that everyone would be somehow “protected” from the outside world, but then if you really don’t take that as seriously as you should, you’re missing the point and clearly that’s what happened.

Yeah, I heard rumors that other teams had much tighter restrictions on their players than the Tigers did. Anyhow, Hayata Itoh and Kenya Nagasaka are also COVID-19 carriers now, and have all been hospitalized. None of them are showing signs of being in serious trouble, health-wise. Still, we gotta root for our boys, that they will come out of this unscathed.

Without a doubt man. We’re always rooting for them. The last thing that we want is something bad to happen to any of them and the staff.

The question also remains, as to whether or not other teams’ players also happen to be infected already. I mean, can you believe that despite this news, there were three farm games played today???

It’s hard to believe, yeah. About the players, we will only know if they start testing everyone that might have been involved with those players already mentioned above. To be fair, anyone right now, that has been in contact or not with the players, should be tested ‘cause there’s just no way to know since you can carry the virus and still not show any symptoms. Anyone can have it at this point but teams should be two steps ahead of everyone, in my opinion. It’s for their best interest, as a business as well, to have everyone in good condition so we can start the season asap.

I feel like NPB has totally gone about this the wrong way, though. They seem to have put higher priority on playing a full season, instead of making sure all precautions were taken in the first place, and making sure everyone’s health came first. I don’t know if you saw this, but Dennis Sarfate, Spencer Patton and Rick van den Hurk took to Twitter to voice their disapproval of having to still travel to other cities (on full trains or airplanes) and stay in hotels and mingle with people in some form or another, just to play baseball in empty ballparks. They openly questioned what the league was doing, and they were right in doing so. And now look at us. Anyways… I wonder now what will happen. I was so excited about this season, and the young Tigers were all impressing, man. Even the new high school draftees.

Exactly! They get it and they’re totally right! What’s the point of empty stadiums if you’re still in contact with the outside world on a daily basis? I really don’t get it. But yeah, that leaves a big question mark for the time being. I’m still pretty excited, to be honest. Even though not being able to see all the games, what I’ve seen so far impressed me a lot, too, and I just can’t wait for this thing to be over and we start kicking some butts lol.

I’m kind of bummed we still haven’t had a CL preview podcast, man… but I have also decided not to do one until we know when the season will start for sure. In the meantime, let’s talk about guys who have impressed so far. I’ll start with a bit of a surprise to most: Dan Onodera, who was our first developmental pick last fall. Dan the Man seems to me like Seiya Kinami with a little more flair and a little more power. Oh, and he hits righty and is an outfielder. But despite a great draft crop, he is possibly the most exciting of the bunch right now. My kind of guy! That having been said… Jo Endo has thoroughly impressed as well. Getting a boatload of extra-base hits on the farm. If he can develop into a plus-defender, he will make us forget all about Hojoh, Kinami, Ueda and the rest of them.

They’re all very exciting indeed and I hope they don’t become those start-of-the-season wonders that all of a sudden start to lose gas just like we’re so used to seeing. My only concern is how these guys are gonna get any playing time with our current roster. It would be nice to see if they are up to the real test anytime soon.

Yeah, they may not get much of a look in 2020, depending of course on how our starters do. The problem with the Tigers is that they have really good depth at almost every position. Not all-star-quality depth, but competent depth. So for guys like Onodera, Endo, Inoue and others to get a proper chance, they’re really going to have to show that they have something more to offer than, say, Nakatani, Takayama, Ueda, Uemoto, and so on.

I’m glad that you said Inoue because I was about to mention him. He seems very promising as well and to be fair, to me they have more of a chance than their competitors right now just because they’re younger and they’re fresh. I will never doubt Uemoto but Nakatani seems pretty much gone to me which is sad. I really love the guy. If you think about depth, as you said, we have plenty but I wish we had more consistent depth in certain areas, especially infield.

Oh, you wanna talk errors? We can, but first let’s finish up on what we started… Nakatani has clubbed a couple of homers on the farm in the past couple of weeks, but yeah, he’s almost a full decade older than Inoue. Given the choice, I’d roll the dice on the kid before I did the same with someone like Nakatani, who has been given chances for five seasons already and only produced really well in one of them.

Exactly. I totally agree with you. One of the good things that I’ve seen is that, of the past few games, the only one that to me was pretty bad was the one that we got a beating against the Fighters by a huge margin but the rest of them, we showed a lotta of resilience and showed some good baseball. Even the last game against them, which was a shutout draw, both teams had plenty of chances to take the lead and just couldn’t. Lots of jams and all of them properly denied.

Well in the preseason I am not too concerned with how the team “comes back” or shows resilience anyways. It’s nice to get the W, but just for example, Kyuji got tattooed in two of his outings. I am not sure what happened the first time, other than his control not being there, but the second one, he said he was working on a new pitch and pretty much expected he would give up a few runs, which he did. The hitters aren’t too worried about erasing deficits so much as they are getting quality at-bats in… but we saw a lot of that! Funny thing is, Kai Ueda and Kairi Shimada hit a homer apiece in March, while Bour had none! (I’m also not worried about him, since he had some good at-bats.)

I know and you got to think that players are also experimenting with things, which is fair. That’s their time to adjust and see whether things work or not. As you said, the fact that Ueda and Shimada got homers and Bour none, although being very surprising, doesn’t necessarily affect the outcome which we’re only gonna be able to see during the season.

Man, just some “insider info” if I may. Bour’s wife somewhat recently landed in Japan. He was all by himself, away from her and their baby, for much of the spring. That probably had some effect on him as well. I hope being close to his family will bring out the best in him! I think the same thing happened with Jerry Sands, whose family arrived a couple of weeks back. Man, family is so important, especially in times like these. 

Without a doubt man. Especially through these difficult and uncertain times, in a totally new environment, in a different culture and different language, it’s important to have the people that you love around you. Family, friends, you name it. And that goes to everyone out there, not just players. We relate to that, don’t we?

You know it, man. I mean, I went to Tokyo a couple of weeks ago without my family and it just felt weird. Especially riding a shinkansen, thinking about what might happen if somehow the virus is somewhere on the train. Makes you think, the players went through that regularly over the past two months. Well bro, I hope the next time we do this, we aren’t talking about infections and shutdowns and such. I hope that the fans get re-infected with Tiger fever and that our pitchers shut down opponents instead. 

I can imagine man. I hope that too. Hopefully we will be able to talk just about this kind of stuff soon enough. Just can’t wait. In the meantime, why don’t we all just watch some throwback stuff, eh?