Dear Readers,
I feel as though the only reason I post these days is to post apologies but I'm afraid this is another one and hopefully will put an end to a lot of things I left up in the air previously.
As I cannot put in the same effort and quality into my match reports, I will not be posting any more for the rest of the season. The writing of the reports I can do, but the spicing up of them ie, the gifs (which I feel sets me apart from some other bloggers) is something that takes a lot more time and something I can't do anymore with my current life priorities.
Unless the Dragons somehow make it to the playoffs (HAH!) I will not be doing specific match reports. I will reassess next year as to whether or not I can provide better coverage in future. I still want to keep this blog going and I want to bring my passion for the Dragons to you as much as I can.
All I can promise you at the moment is that I may post the odd update regarding pertinent news to the team or if I just want to get something out there. I can promise I will cover the 2016 draft and I will write reports on the new players that we sign.
In the meantime I will still be semi-active on twitter and I will still be updating articles on Wikipedia as much as I can.
My most recent Wikipedia articles are this list of Chunichi managers (took me about a week to complete) and I have also taken it upon myself to start some pages in English on the draft. I have so far only done 2015 and 2014 but will get through more as time passes. I do my best to update the player pages when they pass certain milestones or whatever, but that's generally only to pages that I've already cleaned up a fair bit. I have also started some templates for Chunichi Draft picks as well which you can see at the bottom of 2014/2015 draft pick player pages. It's a facet on the Japanese Wikipedia that I thought was a good touch.
Anyway, that's where I'm at. Match reports are beyond me but I'll do a season wrap and put up anything I think is interesting.
While I'm here I may as well talk about the major news out of the Dragons camp that is the "resting" of Motonobu Tanishige, our manager. After a slew of well...average results the Chunichi chairman has axed our long serving catcher as manager with the end of the season somewhat in sight. Our head coach, Shigekazu Mori has taken over as interim manager. From what I've seen since Shige's axing, we've been worse without him. The Swallows and the Tigers have been taking the piss out of us and I wouldn't be surprised if Tanishige's dismissal has deflated moral in the club. I never understand mid-season axings. We have nothing to lose and Mori is by no means going to be a better manager. Would have made more sense to axe him at the end of the year but maybe that's just me. I feel sorry for him but that's baseball. According to this article I found however, it may be that his use-by date was cut short due to, ahem, differences with the general manager, Hiromitsu Ochiai. (What a surprise!)
The hunt for a successor is going to be an interesting one though and not one that I can predict. A lot of fans are going to be shouting out to bring in Mr Dragons, Kazuyoshi Tatsunami who has been interested in managing since his retirement in 2009. The door is open now and maybe a few years on the sidelines watching the game might have been good for him. There is a bit of controversy surrounding Tatsunami though as there have been whispers, and I do say only whispers, of him being involved in a drug scandal with Kazuhiro Kiyohara who was arrested this year. That might be enough, whether evidence is founded or not, for the Dragons to give him a miss.
The other choices out in the ether are a lot less clear for me. I think given Michihiro Ogasawara's management of the 2nd team, there might be an opening for him. I think he'd be a good choice and would bring a good personality to the coaching staff. It might still be a bit early for him though although it seems the job is his to lose according to this article. Of the recently retired, Kazuhiro Wada, Masashi Yamamoto and Kenshin Kawakami all ring bells as possibilities but the former two seem relatively happy with punditry (and don't seem like managerial types to me) and Kawakami had a bit of an acrimonious end to his Chunichi career so there might be some bad blood between him and management (most likely between him an Ochiai).
I'm essentially clueless as to who will step in. It might be one of the current staff members, it might be someone that decided to retire this season (Morino? Yamai?) but hopefully whoever it is will give this team a kick up the bum, bring in some good players in the draft and get the Dragons back on course to being contenders. Ochiai is in charge of a 3 man team to find a new manager and that means probably someone he likes (ruling out Tatsunami and Kawakami).
The Dragons are currently sitting in last place and the only thing we can really be happy about is that we'll get out automatic first pick in the draft at the end of the season. Let's just hope it's not another Ochiai special like Ryosuke Nomura. Ugh.
That'll about do me for now, but as I say, I will update periodically but I will no longer be doing match reports as I can't balance the workload at this particular point in my life.
Thanks for your understanding.
Sincerely,
Scott
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