Monday, March 05, 2007

ESPN and COH

ESPN has created a section of coverage dedicated to the Asian arena. Eric Neel's latest piece on who to watch is now available, and yours truly gets a little mention at the bottom of the article. Thanks to the always informative and enjoyable Eric Neel for the mention. Look for more from me very soon at Baseball Prospectus. More on that to come.....

2 comments:

LathamJoe said...

Mike:
From the little I know about Japanese baseball, my impression is that both fans and players are virtually religious in their respect for the purity of the sport.
That said, is there any indication of the problems that are tainting MLB...primarily steroid use or HGH?
It seems that the recent Japanese athletes are much bigger and stronger than their predessors of 20-25 years ago. Can that be simply explained as normal evolutionary growth?

Mike Plugh said...

I would be absolutely shocked to hear anything about drug use in Japanese baseball. No one would stand for it, so teammates would rat out a guy at the 1st sign of abuse.

The thing to understand about the culture here is that cheating of any kind is a mortal sin. You can be forgiven if you properly grovel, but in a collective society people learn to self-police.

Questions about guys in the Majors is a different story. One Japanese pitcher in the Mets system, I think, was caught using steroids last year. Trying to make the Majors may create this problem for some guys, but not in Japan. At least not more than a case or two at worst.