Posted by winner77 on 9/5/2013 5:51:00 PM (view original):
Posted by lad_buck on 9/1/2013 9:01:00 PM (view original):
sadaharu oh retired from managing japanese professional baseball teams in 2008, for 19 seasons, with a career winning % of .540. he is 73 yrs. old. a left-handed first-baseman, who played only 2 games in the outfield, in 22 seasons.
His record of 55 home runs has been challenged by some ALL TIME greats. Tuffy Rhodes! Kevin Bass! Alex Cabrera!!!
Sigh, gimmie a break with the Oh crap.
...from... <SB NATION>
The San Francisco Giants have toyed with the idea of acquiring new Japan
home run king Wladimir Balentien, this offseason, according to reports by Henry
Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Schulman's exact words are, "mused about the possibility of acquiring," so it's not
as though they are staying up at night trying to work something out, but it is more
than nothing. Much of the discussions are still theoretical at the moment. Giants
GM Brian Sabean has not been a part of the musing, per Schulman.
A factor that could work in the Giants favor, ---if they do decide to pursue Balentien---,
is his close relationship with hitting coach Hensley Meulens, who's known the slugger
for many years and also coached him on the Netherlands' World Baseball Clasic team
in the spring. Meulens said that he and Balentien text every day, & that he had recently
expressed interest in returning to Major League Baseball:
"He wants to come back," Meulens said. "That is what he told me 2 or 3
weeks ago. His dream is to come back and play in the major-leagues..."
The biggest obstacle between Balentien and an MLB renaissance is his contract with
the Yakult Swallows, which runs through the 2015 season. MLB and NPB have very
strict guidelines set up for the exchange of free agents (see: posting fee) and at times
marginal players have had their contracts sold to Japanese baseball clubs.
The process of trading a potentially coveted player like Wladimir Balentien, back to
the big leagues is uncharted territory. Meulens added that the club has talked about
the situation, but that no one knows how to get around Balentien's contract.
Balentien broke Sadaharu Oh's long-standing, single-season, NPB home run record
over the weekend, by smashing his 56th and 57th big flies of the year, on Sunday.
The right-handed slugger, who had never had much luck stateside, has destroyed
opposing pitching in his 3 years in Japanese baseball. He's hit a total of 119 home
runs in just over 350 games.
(on a sidenote, where wis describes the normalization as it relates to carl yastrzemski's season, versus, the rest
of the league that particular year, it should be noted that the seasons of rhodes, bass, cabrera, and balentien, do
not even come close to those overwhelming numbers put up by sadaharu oh, when comparing him to total league
averages of his time, in japanese baseball.)
9/19/2013 12:06 AM (edited)