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January 29, 2002 Japanese BaseballHow Good Is It?Japanese baseball performance should, in theory, be as translatable as performance from any baseball league in the United States. The process has had its challenges, though: the data is not as easy to find, and much of what is available is in a language and a character set that I can't read. (I still don't have complete data for 1996).More serious a problem is the small number of players moving between Japan and the United States. The Translations system depends on being able to set a difficulty level for each league. To do that, I need to have a sizable group of players who have played in both the leagues I am testing and in leagues whose difficulty level I already know. Every player who played in both leagues needs to be compared to the league average; if, as a group, one set is league average, and the second set is 10% above average, you can assume that the second league is 10% worse that the first league. With the Japanese leagues, there really haven't been enough comparisons to get a firm grip on the appropriate difficulty level, especially since almost all the comparisons were of players who went from the U.S. to Japan, and not from Japan to the U.S.. Last year, for the first time, there were more common plate appearances from the prior year moving from Japan to the U.S. than vice versa. (A common plate appearance is the lesser of a player's plate appearances in League 1 and in League 2; it is what I use to ensure that a given player is always weighted equally.) Alex Ramirez was the only player who went to Japan last year to log more than 100 CPA, while five players--Ichiro Suzuki, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, Orlando Merced, Tony Fernandez, and Lou Merloni--came to the U.S. and reached that standard. Using one-year differences, here's how the difficulty ratings for Japan shape up:
You can do the same analysis with Triple-A players. In fact, it is better to use Triple-A players: the Japanese leagues have generally taken players who were stuck in the minors, guys who tend to end up in Triple-A again even if they come back. There have been far more common PA between Japan and Triple-A than there have been between Japan and the majors.
In Baseball Prospectus 2001, I wrote that the difficulty level of Japan was "about even with the Triple-A leagues." Looking at it more comprehensively--I was basing my assessment on a scattering of players, rather than off a full list of Japanese player data--that was a silly thing to say, as the Japanese leagues have clearly and consistently rated as tougher than the American Triple-A leagues. Every case from the 1990s shows that players do worse as a CPA-weighted-average group in Japan than they do in Triple-A, and by a considerable margin. The Triple-A/majors multiplier is .860; if the transitive property holds, then Japanese EqA is worth about .948 of a major-league EqA, which conveniently enough is almost identical to what we got from major leaguers. You can, of course, do the same thing with pitchers. The total ERA ratios for those come out as:
Triple-A weighted average: 17991 IP 1.154 Major league weighted average 7178 IP .903 Remember, though, this is in runs, and runs are proportional to EqA to the 2.5 power. These ratios, in EqA terms, are the same as 1.058 and .960. The 1.058 between Triple-A and Japan is equivalent to a .910 ratio between Japan and the majors. So we have, all in EqA and major-league terms:
Hitting Triple-A to Japan .948 Hitting Major Leagues to Japan .946 Pitching Triple-A to Japan .910 Pitching Major Leagues to Japan .960
The mean of these values is .941.
For perspective, the Federal League, compared to the AL and NL of the
mid-teens, rated as .93 and .95 in its two years of existence. It is
considered a major league. The American Association of the 1880s lasted nine
years; compared to the NL of the same era, it rated as low as .78 (in its
debut year), and eventually got as high as .94. The AA is considered a major
league. The Union Association only existed for one year, 1884, and it rated
at .71, about the same as the present Midwest League. It is considered, by
Major League Baseball, to have been a major league (a very bad decision, in
my opinion; the St. Louis team, led by Fred Dunlap, was major-league
quality, but no other team in the league was.) The Players League of 1890
actually rated as stronger than the NL, with a 1.01 rating. The American
League of 1901, when Nap Lajoie hit .426, has a rating of .93.
The Japanese leagues meet or beat all of them. By historical standards, the
present-day Central and Pacific Leagues are fully deserving of the
"major league" label.
Japanese Ballparks
We've all heard about the tiny little Japanese ballparks, and the impact
they have on the home-run totals of visiting Americans. That isn't so true
anymore. A wave of stadium building swept through Japan over the last 15
years; all six stadiums in the Pacific League, for instance, have been built
or remodeled since 1988, although the Central league still has two parks
from the 1920s. The remade stadiums are only slightly smaller than their
American counterparts.
At least, that's true of the primary stadium for each team. Japanese teams
apparently schedule a number of games away from their nominal home stadium.
Of the 70 home games played by the champion Yakult Swallows in 2001, only 59
were played in their Jingu Stadium home. They played three games in Fukuoka
(home of the Pacific League's Daiei Hawks; there is no interleague play in
Japan, so it's like having the Yankees play in Shea Stadium), two in Chiba
Marine Stadium (home of the Chiba Lotte Marines), two in Sapporo, two in
Morioka, one in Nagano, and one in Sendai. I have no idea how large these
outside stadiums are.
Of course, size isn't the only issue for how a park plays. From looking at
their dimensions, I expected the two 1920s parks--Yakult's Jingu Stadium and
Hanshin's Koshien Stadium--to be wildly divergent. Jingu has very small
dimensions, while Koshien is a lot more spacious. Americans playing for
Yakult have done better than expected; Americans playing for Hanshin have
done worse. I fully expected Yakult to have a Coors-like park factor, and
for Hanshin to look like the old Astrodome.
The game-by-game records for the last two years were available online, so I
compiled park factors for Japan exactly the way I do for American teams.
What I thought would show up didn't happen at all.
The parks:
The opinions I read indicate that everyone thinks the Tokyo Dome, where the
Giants and Fighters play, is an extreme hitters' park; it may be that the
Yomiuri score in 2000 was an aberration.
Later this week, we'll look at the top players in Japan over the last few
seasons.
Clay Davenport is an author of Baseball Prospectus. You can contact him by
clicking here.
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