Comments on: M’s Sign Int’l SS Pedro Okuda

By: number9

number9 — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:42:30 +0000

The Tokyo Yakult Swallows have had an academy in Brazil since 2000 and have drafted a few players from there. They picked another Japanese-Brazilian in Maike Magario this year.
http://tokyoswallows.com/2009/11/15/tokyos-2009-amateur-draft-picks/

By: olystuart

olystuart — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:49:46 +0000

I appreciate it – it’s not clutter. Thanks for the post, Jay.

By: Mike Snow

Mike Snow — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:41:39 +0000

Just keep in mind that you’ll need to adjust for park effects when the Bolivian prospects start showing up.

By: msb

msb — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:23:40 +0000

It’s not clutter!

By: Jay Yencich

Jay Yencich — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:20:09 +0000

Actually, Conor, the MVN guys hooked me up with another publisher, so I’ll be good and Dave and Derek won’t have to worry about the front page getting cluttered with things like this that excite mostly me and ten other people on the planet

By: Conor

Conor — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:05:53 +0000

Good stuff, Jay. With MVN shutting down, will you be writing here all the time now?

By: ThePopeofChilitown

ThePopeofChilitown — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:07:37 +0000

Very interesting information. Pretty astonishing that these non-traditional breeding grounds of baseball talent have such untapped potential.

His name reminds me of some of the better science fiction out there. I vaguely remember Arthur C. Clarke’s 3001, and the descriptions of future people and their seemingly homogenized names. Cool stuff all around.

By: Jay Yencich

Jay Yencich — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:49:11 +0000

re: nuin

I don’t see him coming up in Baseball-Reference under places of birth, but maybe he just grew up in Brazil? I don’t know, I’d be interested to see what he did if true.

As an amendment to my last post, I just checked the IBAF and they don’t have a branch office in Paraguay yet. They do have offices in Chile (Santiago) and Bolivia (Cochabamba) though. Something to look into.

By: nuin

nuin — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:22:56 +0000

Just a curious note, is that the first Brazilian in the Big Leagues (I think he got to AA) was not of Japanese descent. If my memory doesn’t fail me, he was signed by the Mets but ended having some injuries before moving up to AAA and MLB.

By: Jay Yencich

Jay Yencich — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:07:27 +0000

This is part of the reason I love doing posts on topics like this here where the traffic is better. They bring all the interesting commenters out of the woodwork.

I was looking at Deanna’s site and a few others earlier in the day for info on Okuda and read about Unten and others, but Naville is new to me. The way baseball has dispersed like that via Japan is rather interesting to me.

And Ballspiker is right, in that the only official American presence that I know of in Brazil is that of the Rays, who decided that even though there are only a handful of players that sign every year, it was going to be worthwhile to set up a base there. I don’t know who officially is scouting down there for the M’s, but Jean Tome, a pitcher that I like, was signed by both Hide Sueyoshi and Emilio Carrasquel. It was through looking up information on him a while back that I learned about how they typically teach Japanese in the camps too, just in case. That could be primarily for the benefit of guys like Okuda who end up playing HS ball in Japan.

As for Paraguay, I was actually trying to remember as I wrote this whether or not I’ve seen a player signed out of either of the Guays. I’ll double-check and see what I come up with, but I don’t think I have yet, although there was one Argentine/Japanese kid who signed and was playing somewhere in the VSL. I think that it might be a worthwhile venture, but getting it started on your own might be a little tricky as funding probably wouldn’t become available until it really got going. Even then, the game is so much more popular around Venezuela, and I can’t say I’ve heard anything about baseball in Chile or Bolivia.