Kazuo Matsui To Be Named Manager For Seibu's Farm Team

NPB On Reddit Twitter

Kazuo Matsui Will Retire At End Of 2018 NPB Season

NPB On Reddit Twitter

Kazuo Matsui Returning To Seibu

Kazuo Matsui, who left the Seibu Lions as a free agent after the 2003 season, will return to his first pro club next season, a source said on Thursday.

Japan Times

Manny Ramirez Was Almost A Met 10 Years Ago, But Deal Couldn't Get Done

Manny Ramirez hit two of his 555 career home runs in Flushing. One during his three games at Shea Stadium as a member of the Red Sox and the other at Citi Field while on a three-day visit with the Dodgers.

Newsday

Leaderboarding: Best MLB Players From Japan

On Friday, our own Jon Heyman confirmed that veteran right-hander Hiroki Kuroda will leave MLB and return to Japan to pitch for the Hiroshima Toyo Carp in 2015, his former team. He spent the first 11 seasons of his career wth Hiroshima before coming over to MLB to pitch for the Dodgers (2008-11) and Yankees (2012-14).

CBS Sports

Trade Targets: Second Base...Saturday Follow-Up

A post over at FanHome sparked me to go a little further with yesterday's trade targets post. While OBP, SLG, ISO, and LD% are good indicators of performance, another good tool to use is the Baseball Prospectus' EqA, especially when comparing minor leaguers to major leaguers. A thorough definition of EqA can be found here. It's basically a simple way to condense a bunch of numbers into a recognizable statistic. A .260 EqA is an average player.

Rockin' The Red

Trade Targets: Second Base

To start this exercise, which I feel should have an amazing graphic such as in the Colbert Report, it is inevitable to need to make judgment decisions as to who will be in contention by next month and who won't. That said, a lot could change due to a team's place in the standings, such as the Rockies' and Padres' reluctance to become sellers as a result of their up-in-the-air, free-for-all division. The teams with records around .500 or worse at this point in time look like this:

Rockin' The Red