Bobby Valentine Says the Whackiest Things

[Can_of_corn]

Bobby V. is of the opinion that a propensity toward 3-2 counts is a cultural phenomenon with Japanese pitchers.

http://www.csnne.com/baseball-boston-redsox/redsox-talk/Valentine-explains-Japanese-pitchers-fas?blockID=730922

I guess Koji isn't actually Japanese.

[Flash- bd]

This is hilarious. I guarantee if you look into the Japanese papers today you'd see a lot of headlines that translate something like this: "Stupid American manager says dumb, unintelligible things about Japanese baseball."

[Barnaby Graves]

There's <i>something</i> to this, not in the way Bobby is insinuating but Nomo, Darvish, and Matsuzaka all have high walk rates and high K rates. I don't really know why. But they all have walk rates over 4 per 9 and K rates over 8 per 9. I assume, without figuring out how many full counts they get into, that such walk and K rates would lend themselves to more full counts.

Might also have something to do with the fact all three of those pitchers have rather expansive arsenals of pitches rather than what you typically see in American-grown pitchers who usually throw 2 pitches as relievers and 3 or 4 pitches as starters. You're more willing to go into deep counts when you feel like, even at 3-2, you still have something the batter hasn't seen yet. And from the batter's perspective, you're willing to watch more pitches when a guy is throwing you an extra helping of junk and doesn't have the kind of fastball usage American pitchers seem to have (i.e. I think American pitchers try to establish the fastball more and Japanese pitchers seem to be willing to just make batting as uncomfortable as possible by throwing less straight stuff).