Yakult Rookie sidearmer Tatsuyoshi Masubuchi will likely start on the fourth at Meiji Jingu Stadium against Hanshin. 

Yomiuri Manager Tatsunori Hara has promoted former Seibu and Orix shot caller Haruki Ihara to bench coach. Ihara had been brought in to oversee the team's defense and baserunning and has done well enough that Hara promoted him. True to Ihara's style, the Giants have been much more aggressive on the basepaths this spring than years past. 

Lefthander Shigeki Noguchi, who spent almost all of last season in the minors after joining the club as a free agent, will be the long relief man in the bullpen for the top team this time around. 

Both Hiroshi Kisanuki and Norihito Kaneto had four inning stints in an Eastern League game Wednesday and each man gave up a run, Kaneto on five hits and two walks and Kisanuki on four hits and two walks. Kaneto said that his front side was opening too early but he couldn't correct it and wondered if the results he got might have been much more dire had he been facing big league competition. 

Kisanuki called the two bases on balls he issued "a waste" and added that there was nothng good he could take away from the outing. 

When Tetsuya Utsumi makes the start on Opening Day, he will be the first Giants southpaw to do that in 28 years, according to Sankei Sports. The last lefty to do it was Hisao Niura in 1979. 

Taxi squad pitcher Wilfin Obispo was clocked at 96mph starting a game between a team made up of various club's taxi squadders and Yakult's minor league nine. But he also struggled with his control, going three innings and giving up two hits and walking a man on 61 pitches while striking out four. 

Closer Kiyoshi Toyoda announced that he will be blogging beginning Thursday. 

Chiang Chien-ming threw 56 pitches in the bullpen Wednesday. It is said that he may start against Chunichi on April 3rd. 

Koshien Tournament After unloading a monster homer in bp Tuesday, Osaka Toin High slugger Sho Nakata pounded two roundtrippers Wednesday in a game against suprisingly tenacious Sano Nichidai High for an 11-8 victory. With his team down 1-0 in the third, Nakata stepped up with two on and slammed a fastball down and in over the leftfield wall for a three run homer as part of a six run uprising. He followed that up in the fourth with a 425 foot jack into the leftcenterfield stands with a man on first on a fastball down the middle as Toin pushed a total of three across. They would stretch that advantage to 10-4 before Sano piled up four in the sixth to get back in the game, but that prove to be it for them on the scoreboard and now they go home. 

The last guy to go yard in a spring Koshien in consecutive at bats in one game was Hideki Matsui back in 1992. He is also the first to go yard in three straight years during Koshien Tournaments since Kazuhiro Kiyohara and Masumi Kuwata back in the 1980's. He now has 74 homers for his schoolboy career. 

Braves Japan scout Hiroyuki Oya, when asked about Nakata's homers, reacted with the nearest Japanese equivalent of "he hits 'em like the big boys do," in saying that he has power beyond what most high schooler's offer. Oya also compared Nakata's batting approach to Andruw Jones. 

Mets scout Isao Ojimi also commented that Nakata has the makeup of a potential major leaguer.

But perhaps in the most stunning result of the day, Tokoha Gakuen Kikukawa High drubbed mighty Imabari Nishi High 10-0. That would be the equivalent of Hawaii University going into Ann Arbor and clobbering Michigan in football by four touchdowns. Unbelievable. Tokoha starter Kenjiro Tanaka struckout 17 while scattering three hits., besting Imabari's ace Noshiro, who is a possible pro prospect. Tanaka's fastball was clocked at 84-85mph. 

In the sloppiest match of the day, two nobody schools, Ogaki Nichidai High out of Gifu Prefecture and Kita Ozu High out of Shiga Prefecture faced off with Ogaki taking it 7-4 thanks to 15 walks/HBP by Ozu pitching. 

Miscellaneous Responding to outrage by the public as well as amateur authorities and a strike threat by the players association, NPB interim commissioner Yasuchika Negoro Wednesday announced that he was putting an end to the kibouwaku, beginning with this fall's draft. This is something of a defeat for Yomiuri, which had wanted to extend it for one more year by linking it with the free agency question. However, with Pacific League clubs moving toward voluntarily abandoning the kibouwaku and Chunichi stepping back from it as well the other day, Negoro came up with his own proposal and circulated it among the 12 pro teams, who agreed to it. It will be formally approved at an executive board meeting on April 2nd. 

However, for this draft, it will leave in place the lottery system whereby if more than one team is interested in a player for the first round then who gets that player's rights will be determined in a drawing. This will apply to both the high school and college/industrial league drafts. 

Moreover, he is calling on NPB to come up with ideas as to how to keep young players from going to MLB. MLB can't ban its teams from signing Japanese youngsters without running the risk of ending up being accused of racial discrimination and further jeopardizing its anti-trust exemption. Make no mistake, it would be racist for MLB to do that. 

Now we'll have to wait and see what kind of childish fit Yomiuri chairman Tsuneo Watanabe, who essentially created the kibouwaku at the threat of his team leaving NPB if it wasn't approved back in 1993, decides to throw over this. Negoro did throw them a face saving bone when he proposed as part of the deal he concocted that he would push for the shortening of free agency qualifying by two years (which needs to happen anyway). But that by no means ensures that the 11 other teams will go for the idea and there is nothing in this pact that would dictate that they have to heed Negoro's idea with regard to that issue. 

Players association head Shinya Miyamoto praised the removal of the kibouwaku from the draft process but also said that didn't go far enough since he would like to see one draft and not the two they have now. 

A representative from the Japan High School Baseball Federation said that he was relieved at the pros deciding to ashcan the kibouwaku and he expects amateur officials to take a more cooperative stance with the pros now that the non-pros have gotten their way on this issue. When asked about preventing amateur players skipping off to MLB, he said that it might be possible to put in place a rule barring players from signing with pro teams before the draft since the Japanese school term wouldn't end until the following March. While nothing would stop them from signing players drafted by NPB clubs, MLB generally keeps hands off once a player has been taken by a Japanese team so as to keep good relations with them. However, even if the amateurs pass some kind of rule about this, a player can just drop out of school or leave his industrial league squad and he would no longer be under the appropriate amatuer association's jurisdiction and thus could take a job with an MLB organization. For example, if Minnesota decided it wanted to throw J.D. Drew money (when Drew was originally drafted by an MLB club) at Nakata and Nakata was inclined to take it, NPB would be powerless to stop it. They might be angry, but tough shit. If an amateur associatin tried to jump in, Nakata would just leave the Toin baseball program, making any move they make moot. 

But even given all that, I don't see many elite players leaving Japan as high schoolers or collegians for a whole host of reasons, one of which is the under the table money teams use to get past rookie contract salary restrictions (does this get reported to the government? Inquiring minds want to know) and that will often be too rich for MLB team's GMs to approve. 

With it now looking as if Carl Pavano will get the Opening Day assignment for the Yankees, Kei Igawa is most likely going to see his MLB debut on the 5th against Tampa Bay or the 6th against Baltimore, depending on whether he becomes the third or fourth starter due to the injury to Chien-ming Wang. 

I almost forgot about this, but Jeff Karstens is having an elbow problem, a development that was greeted almost with glee by the Japanese press since he is seen as a rival for one of the team's rotation spots. Not cool, guys. 

Yankees outfielder Hideki Matsui has contributed 10 million yen (about $80,000) to help the victims of a recent big earthquake in his native Ishikawa Prefecture. Boy, that's a nice chunk of change. By the way, today is Matsui's dad Masao's birthday. 

Seattle centerfielder Ichiro Suzuki was 0-3 against Texas Wednesday while catcher Kenji Johjima was 0-2. 

Chicago White Sox second baseman Tadahito Iguchi was 0-2 from the eight hole Wednesday against Arizona. 

Colorado second baseman Kazuo Matsui was 0-3 Wednesday against the Cubs. 

Cardinals outfielder So Taguchi was 1-4 Wednesday against Baltimore. 

Hideki Okajima was inserted to face the Twins in relief Wednesday and got rocked for three hits and two runs in his one inning. 

Okajima, Daisuke Matsuzaka and their translator went out to lunch with about ten American writers and reportedly talked not only about baseball but also concerning hobbies and more personal stuff. Matsuzaka said that though the conversation took place in a relaxed atmosphere he found it a "significant." experience. The Sports Nippon article I cribbed this from didn't say why he thought that. The reporter who submitted the piece, though, called the U.S. media "often blunt [in its opinions]." Comments like that only make the Japanese media look soft (which it is). 

The Japanese press was also able to whip out one of their favorite memes, American being a crime ridden country in discussing a lecture that Matsuzaka and the other players got about how to avoid trouble and what to do if in a situation where somebody whips out a gun. Sports Nippon quote a stat that there were "only" 70,000 violent crimes committed in a year in Japan compared with 1.4 million in the U.S. They didn't cite where they got those numbers and I'm too lazy to check on them myself. 

Waseda University was beaten 9-5 by Japan Rail East's industrial league team (A ball level), wnhich isn't a suprise. But Yuki Saito, fresh off of a less than satisfying outing against Osaka Taiiku University yesterday was in for an inning of relief and surrendered a pair of hits but was scored upon. 

Finally, for those of you in MLB who might have known Sankei Sports writer Tatsuya Miyakawa back when he was covering it in New York in 1999-2000, he died of organ failure at age 42 Wednesday. After returning to Japan, Miyakawa was put in a supervisory position and he also wrote a weekly column.