Dragons still in the mix down the stretch, OPS+ leaders and the middle infield.

It has been another interesting year for Dragons fans. Despite sitting in the bottom half of the table despite some early gains, the team are still well in the mix for an A-Class finish. With the All-Star game approaching, I thought it now worth looking at some of the data now that we have a larger sample on the season. 

So far, the highlights of the season have arguably been another high-flying season from Seiya Hosokawa and the gallant return of Hiroto Takahashi. Hosokawa has picked up where he left off last year. Although home runs haven't come as consistently as hoped, the second-year outfielder leads most offensive categories for the team once again this year. Hiroto Takahashi has come back with a vengeance after being sent down before the beginning of the season to work on his pitching form. Now with a sub-1.00 ERA after 11 starts, the Owaraishi native has been taking names. His most recent exploit; an 11K game against the Hanshin Tigers.

Of the less glamorous, production at first base has been hard to come by. Sho Nakata has been underwhelming and recently out of the lineup with injury concerns while Dayan Viciedo appears to have gotten lost in an Ozzie Smith-like void. Neither has been seen or heard from since interleague, mostly with a mixture of Hiroki Fukunaga, Takaya Ishikawa and Orlando Calixte seeing time there. 

Now I feel is as good a time as any to see where the offense stacks up against the rest of the league. OPS+ is my preferred metric here, and I will say, there's quite a few guys that are making waves. I've limited my sample to players that have 100 plate appearances or more. For those unfamiliar, OPS+ is a metric that takes the league average OPS and rates it against the individual. A score of 100 is average. While 120 for example would be a player that is 20% better than average while 80 would be 20% worse. This way we can get context on how good/bad players are stacked up against other hitters in the league. 

Last season, only three qualified Dragons hitters finished the year with an OPS+ of 100 or more. 5 in total. Hosokawa, Ishikawa and Yuki Okabayashi were the only ones who were hitting better than the league average. Now about 85 games in, the Dragons have 6 hitters with 100 PA or more that are doing pretty well. Hosokawa leads this with 132 while former Tigers utility man Yutaro Itayama sits just behind him. Hiroki Fukunaga has built on his promising rookie year last year and also leads the team with RISP at around a .300 clip. Utility guy Orlando Calixte has maintained his early season heroics while Shuhei Takahashi has been pretty good despite fears he may be pushed out of the team. Ishikawa of course has been solid, but perhaps hasn't been hitting the long ball quite as much to get the kudos he deserves. The infield pairing of Mikiya Tanaka and Kaito Muramatsu have been tolerable, and the offensive production in the middle-infield has been good enough particularly when compared to last year. Production on the whole has been on the uptick with Itayama perhaps the only one in this ten that has not been a consistent regular throughout the year. Yuki Okabayashi not being the same hitter he was before his injury is a storyline to follow. It's odd that a guy who relies on contact suddenly can't make any after two relatively consistent years. Will he come back to form? We'll have to keep an eye on him.

What about our prodigious middle-infield? Muramatsu has unfortunately been taken by injury. The Meiji grad was on a tear earlier in the year seemingly hitting everything. He slowed down as the season progressed eventually hitting under .300 before being taken off the first-team roster after injuring his left shoulder in late June. News is however, he should be back soon. Tanaka has been passable enough with a bat as his running game and defense are impeccable. The Asia University ninja has been making some very good looking plays cementing his spot at second base. Compared to the rest of the league though, how are the middle infielders going in terms of offense? Let's have a look at second base.

It should probably surprise no-one that the Baystars' Shugo Maki tops this list. One of the better hitters in the Central League, let alone among middle infielders, Maki is 26% above the league average offensively. Naoki Yoshikawa of the Giants and Takumu Nakano of the Tigers are the only two others that are above average. Our boy Mikiya at 10% below the league average is the worst of the regulars at this position, but one could make an argument that his defence and base-running help make up for his offensive shortcomings compared to some of the others here. Either way you cut it, his bat is the least effective of the Central League second basemen. Let's move onto short-stops.

It is the Swallows man, Hideki Nagaoka who stands at the top of this list as the only short-stop in the Central to be an above-average hitter. This, as you can imagine, brings down the bar for what is considered acceptable offensively. Kaito Muramatsu clocks in at number two, but only just while the combination of Seiya Kinami and Ryuhei Obata at the Tigers rounds out the top three. Similar to the Dragons and Tanaka, defense has been valued over offense at the Carp with Masaya Yano performing below average with the bat but with a great glove. While myriads of solutions have be trialed at short stop for the Baystars with Mori and Kyoda sticking the most but not contributing a lot. Makoto Kadowaki rounds out the list with a relatively underwhelming year considering how well he performed at the tail-end of the 2023 season. The Dragons are getting decent value out of shortstop this year which is a big difference compared to Ryuku for parts of the last two seasons. Ryuku was at times almost unbearable offensively. So far, compared to last year, the Dragons seems to be getting better value out of the middle infield than last year which is a positive step in the right direction.

Overall from this snippet of data, we can see that there just isn't a lot of offensive value to be had in the middle infield across the Central League. Shugo Maki is the only elite hitter here and his defensive value is quite questionable. Nagaoka and Yoshikawa are probably the most rounded of players listed here, as in they can hit and play good defense, but there's no real homer power here. 

One last thing that I haven't touched on at all is production at catcher. Takuya Kinoshita had previously proven to be a threat in that regard, but we haven't seen anything from him at this stage. With free agency not too far around the corner, I am just about ready to hand over the catchers' mask full-time to Kota Ishibashi (although this is something I've been championing for a while now). He certainly couldn't do much worse. 

Overall, some interesting storylines to follow. The Dragons are currently 5th but are only 4.5 games out of a playoff spot at present. There's still a hill to climb, but with every other team falling over itself, there's still hope.