With apologies to the late great Rod Serling, this place is not the Twilight Zone, but rather a black hole in Yokohama, a phenomenon that has been identified as the cause for gaping holes in the BayStars' logic.
The first indication of a serious rip in the rational fabric of the universe came soon after the BayStars signed first baseman Jon Zuber.
The team had studied video of "Zube" hitting in 1996 and felt it knew what he was capable of. Unfortunately for everyone involved, what Yokohama saw in Zuber was the potential to hit home runs, something he has never been able to do.
Although Zuber reminded the organization that he wasn't a power hitter, it was too late. The rift in the universe had already emptied team officials' brain cavities of all higher reasoning functions. The club told Zuber, whose highest home run total to date was nine for Double-A Reading in 1994, he was expected to hit 25.
At one point in the season, coaches told the disciplined left-handed swinger to look for a first-pitch strike and try to hit it out of the park.
"I tried to do it but I went 0-for-8 and they sent me down," said Zuber.
Throughout his career, Zuber has been productive because he makes fewer outs than most hitters. But the BayStars, robbed by cosmic accident of the good sense we have come to expect from this fine and exemplary organization, are in no state to look at Zuber's impressive ability to reach base. Instead, they are locked into a one-dimensional line of reasoning that goes like this: Good first basemen hit home runs; Zuber doesn't hit home runs; thus Zuber is not a good first baseman.
The problem with this pseudo logic is that baseball is not about hitting the most home runs. It's about winning the most games.
Hitting for power is important, but not as important as the ability to reach base. A team of high-average singles hitters who draw lots of walks will score more runs than a team of low-average power hitters who never walk, because the slugging team will make outs far faster and have fewer runners on base to drive in.
People look at Zuber and think he can't play first base--because he doesn't hit home runs. That's nonsense.
There were people of similarly limited imagination who thought Ichiro Suzuki would be a poor major league right fielder because he lacks serious power.
Zuber's lack of power is not a handicap, but it is something a team
has to consider. Players who can hit 25 homers in the majors but who can
only play first base are a dime a dozen. So if you have a powerless team
that gets lots of runners on base--such as the BayStars--it would make
sense to go after one of those guys rather than a fellow like Zuber, who
improves what you already do well.
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Having been betrayed by Zuber, who failed miserably to transform himself into a power hitter at the age of 31, the BayStars sought a solution by getting Anthony Sanders, a big fast center fielder.
Sanders was supposed to supply the power. The press reported that Sanders batted fourth for the gold medal-winning American team at the Sydney Olympics.
Sanders DID bat fourth for for his country three times in Sydney. But to claim he was THE No. 4 hitter requires a leap of faith that would stop the X-Files' Fox Mulder. According to STATS Inc.'s "Minor League Handbook 2001," Sanders entered the fourth slot twice as a defensive replacement and once as a pinch runner. He started one game in the tournament, batting seventh against Australia.
As this story probably originated in Yokohama, where the ominous powers of the universe come into play, fans are requested to be charitable and let it slide.
Sanders, unlike Zuber, does have some power, so there is hope that pockets of reason, if not sanity, are still holding out in the BayStars front office.
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Still, this kind of behavior is pretty common. Analyst Bill James has frequently observed that one hallmark of a poor organization is a focus on what players can't do rather than what they can.
The best story along these lines regards former Nippon Ham Fighters captain Tetsuro Hirose, who the Fighters expected to develop into a power-hitting infielder.
When Hirose didn't show any signs of becoming another Robin Yount, he was consigned to the bench. After years of getting little playing time as utility infielder, an injury to shortstop Yukio Tanaka forced the Fighters to play Hirose at short everyday.
BINGO! At the age of 31, Hirose's career took off like a rocket. His hustle put the Fighters on the map in 1993. After a decade of mediocrity, the Hamsters were suddenly the most exciting team in Japan.
As things would have it, the Fighters lost the pennant that season to Seibu, whose Lion King at the time was Masaaki Mori--now the brains, so to speak, in the BayStars dugout. Mori was a frequent target of then Fighters' manager Keiji Osawa's barbs. Osawa laughed at the Lions' predictable offense, saying fans who spent their precious time at the ballpark deserved better than to be put to sleep by the ubiquitous sacrifice bunts of Mori's methodical machine-like offense. Mori responded with a sermon about a manager's duty being to bore the fans if it results in wins.
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Nothing the BayStars do should come as a surprise. The organization has been famous for ignoring the power hitting talents of its minor leaguers in order to field teams of speedy slap hitters.
In what should be classified as a "Searex File," the city of Yokosuka has spawned its own cosmic phenomenon, perhaps as a defense against the ravages of the organizational black hole in Yokohama. Players for the club's farm team in Yokosuka, the Shonan Searex, have developed an almost super human stoicism about their fate.
Katsuhiro Hiratsuka was a fine hitter with power trapped in the minors for years before bursting on to the scene as a regular with the Hanshin Tigers. When asked what he thought of his time in Eastern League limbo, he responded: "It made me a better person."
Last week, Takahiro Saeki, a current BayStar outfielder and first baseman responded to the same question in much more blunt terms.
Saeki, who sat on the bench for years so he could observe and learn from the mediocre play of big-name veteran Norihiro Komada, said, "If you don't get a chance to play, it's your own fault, nobody else's."
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And just so you'll know that not all mysteries go unsolved, there is an explanation for the sudden and unexpected return of power to Yukio Tanaka's swing. The Fighters infielder has, since Aug. 10, been using catcher Toshihiro Noguchi's bats. They're the same size as Tanaka's usual lumber but the end of the barrels are concave making them about 10 grams lighter.
The Hot Corner appears each Thursday in The
Daily Yomiuri .