After his last start was pushed back due to concerns about his progress/condition, Rick van den Hurk finally pitched a Ni-Gun game for the Softbank Hawks again. Last Saturday he pitched three innings against the Ni-Gun team of the Yomiuri Giants. He struck out three and walked one. His pitches topped 94 mph. Rick gave…
Unfortunately Rick van den Hurk wasn’t able to extend his record of fourteen wins without recording a loss. Last week he broke the 50-year old record by winning the game vs the Chiba Lotte Marines, in which he struck out ten batters and gave up only one run. Wladimir Balentien is hitting rather well lately,…
Today the Yomiuri Giants organized a press conference. It was all about a betting scandal in which their pitcher Kyosuke Takagi was involved. Takagi admitted that he bet on NPB games. Last year the club did terminate the contracts of three pitchers that were involved in gambling already. Then pitchers Kasahara, Satoshi Fukuda and Tatsuya Matsumoto were banned from baseball…
In the past there have been Dutchies who played in the NPB; Hensley Meulens to name one, even won a Nippon Series title with the Yakult Swallows in 1995. Or Andruw Jones and Loek van Mil, who played for the Rakuten Golden Eagles in 2014. But when it comes to Dutchies this year’s Nippon Series…
The two Dutchies that play in the Japanese professional league, the NPB, were very successful today in game two of the Climax Series, the semi finals of Japanese Pro Baseball. Curacao born Wladimir Balentien bounced back from a hitless game yesterday. His team, the Yakult Swallows, were not so successful yesterday either as they fell…
Curcacaoan slugger, Wladimir Balentien has returned to the Yakult Swallows after a long injury that he sustained since the start of the season. Earlier this week, Balentien played his only rehab game with the Swallows’ Ni-Gun (minor league) team in which he went 0 for 2 with two walks. Since the Swallows are in the midst of…
After losing the homerun season record to Curacao native Wladimir Balentien iwho broke the record by five homeruns in 2013, which set the mark on 60, Sadaharu Oh was surpassed by Takeya Nakamura who hit his sixteenth grand slam of his career which put him in sole posession of the list of career grand slams. In…
Wladimir Balentien, the NPB homerun record holder from Curacao, has been placed on the NPB roster of the Yakult Swallows. After surgery to his Achilles tendon, Balentien went a relatively long way to recovery. Last week he played two rehab games with the Ni-Gun team of the Yakult Swallows with mixed results. Last Wednesday Balentien…
Sadaharu Oh and his typical stance Despite being born in Tokyo in 1940, Sadaharu Oh has been inducted to the Taiwanese Baseball Hall of Fame. I hear you wonder: “why?” Well, he was the son of a Chinese (Taiwanese) father and a Japanese mother. Despite the fact that he never played in Taiwan, Oh…
After the posts “Van den Hurk to Japan?“, “Yomiuri Giants also interested in Van den Hurk” and “Despite having signed Matsuzaka, Van den Hurk still on Hawks’ radar“, I can finally tell that according to sponichi.co.jp, Rick van den Hurk has signed a two year deal with the Softbank Hawks from Fukuoka. According to the…
