Good news for baseball fans from Curaçao and the Netherlands. Curaçao native Wladimir Balentien and the Yakult Swallows are on the verge of signing a one-year contract extension. According to Yaoo.com, the 33-year old outfielder decided yesterday to stay with the team.
Currently, both parties are working on the finishing touches of the contract, which is done by agents at this stage. Both parties expect to hammer out a deal in the coming weekend. Balentien’s new contract will be for one year and is expected to be worth $3 million (about ¥336 million).
Last year the management of the Yakult Swallows played hard to get as they claimed that the player of team Kingdom of the Netherlands was a defensive liability. It took both parties much longer to strike a deal. This year the management thinks the salary gap is much easier to overcome.
In the past season, Balentien missed a part due to a pulled hamstring. Nevertheless, he played 125 games in which he posted the following slug line: .254/ .358/ .506. With his 32 dingers, Balentien was ranked second in the Central League after Alex Guerrero. But his 32 home runs and 80 RBI topped the Swallows’ stats in that area.
According to Yahoo.com, the sixty home runs Balentien hit in 2013, still have something magical, which may be a part of the reason why the Swallows want to re-sign Balenien. Since coming to Japan in 2011, Wladimir has never hit less than 30 home runs, except for the 2015 season when he was injured for the biggest part of the season.
The Swallows want to build a contender with “new” manager Junji Ogawa, who managed the team before between 2010 and 2014. Apparently, the Swallows think he fits the picture as they still see Balentien as a reliable run producer.
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