Interesting Interview with Yomiuri Giant, Alex Ramirez
Posted 10-12-2008 at 12:20 PM by Gwynar
They were just showing an interview with Alex Ramirez on Get Sports (Sunday night sports show on TV Asahi) and I think it actually helps explain a lot of how baseball in Japan works.
For a while, Ramirez had a fair tough time with pitches outside. But over the last couple of years, he's been studying video of his past ABs and has found that he can rely on the movements of the catcher behind him to help him guess locations of pitches.
Unlike the Majors, where pitchers usually have more control over the flow of the game, catchers do most of the leading. So when a pitcher gets rocked over here, it isn't always the pitcher that gets the blame.
Ramirez has also changed his batting stance this season, going from one that had his hands out in front of his head, to one that has his hands further back, which gets rid of some extra motion and allows him to come down harder on inside pitches. In the past, Ramirez did struggle with pitches on the inner portion of the plate, but the new stance allows him better overall plate coverage and a quicker stride through the zone.
I actually managed to record the last few minutes of the interview and will post it up when I have some time. The interview is in English so you'll at least be able to understand what he says. The rest is basically just some Japanese explaining what's actually going on.
UPDATE: You can now see the video over at YouTube.
For a while, Ramirez had a fair tough time with pitches outside. But over the last couple of years, he's been studying video of his past ABs and has found that he can rely on the movements of the catcher behind him to help him guess locations of pitches.
Unlike the Majors, where pitchers usually have more control over the flow of the game, catchers do most of the leading. So when a pitcher gets rocked over here, it isn't always the pitcher that gets the blame.
Ramirez has also changed his batting stance this season, going from one that had his hands out in front of his head, to one that has his hands further back, which gets rid of some extra motion and allows him to come down harder on inside pitches. In the past, Ramirez did struggle with pitches on the inner portion of the plate, but the new stance allows him better overall plate coverage and a quicker stride through the zone.
I actually managed to record the last few minutes of the interview and will post it up when I have some time. The interview is in English so you'll at least be able to understand what he says. The rest is basically just some Japanese explaining what's actually going on.
UPDATE: You can now see the video over at YouTube.
Total Comments 2
Comments
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For anyone interested, I just finished uploading the video over at YouTube. As I said, the interview is done in English so you should be able to get most of what's going on.Posted 10-15-2008 at 09:36 AM by Gwynar 
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Thanks for sharing this. It was an interesting watch. Do they sometimes leave the red strike zone box up while the games are on live or was that just a graphic for the video?Posted 10-16-2008 at 11:04 AM by knucklehead7 
