Originally published on July 7, 2019.
This essay candidly criticizes Giants manager Hara’s excessive reliance on bunt tactics, while arguing that such small-ball strategy diminishes the appeal of professional baseball in today’s hitter-friendly era and drives fans away from the game.
It also touches on the deceit surrounding China’s explanation of its missile launches, sharply linking views on baseball and international reporting to the broader pathology of the age and the Japanese media.

2019-07-07
I do not think Manager Hara is a bad manager, but while I think he is a good one, the one thing I truly cannot stand is his bunt strategy, or rather, his love of bunting.

Yesterday, for the first time in a while, NHK was broadcasting a Giants game, so I watched it, but I lost interest almost immediately and stopped even half-watching it.
I do not think Manager Hara is a bad manager, but while I think he is a good one, the one thing I truly cannot stand is his bunt strategy, or rather, his love of bunting.
In this respect alone, Major League Baseball is far better…in the sense that Japanese professional baseball is simply too boring.
(Professional baseball…that is, an entertainment business in which professionals earning hundreds of millions of yen a year display professional skill.)
By the fourth inning…with one out and runners on first and third…and moreover this year’s Giants have a lineup full of hitters who can all bat…he ordered Wakabayashi to bunt, a switch-hitter who emerged this year, has a high batting average, and often comes through in big spots.
The result was a failed bunt and two outs.
Villanueva happened to get a hit, so they scored one run.
But if the opponent is SoftBank, with its powerful lineup and well-prepared pitching staff, and if it is the short-term battle of the Japan Series, the Giants will lose because of his petty little tricks.
It would be fine if the Giants’ current pitching staff could reliably hold a one-run lead…it would be fine if they had put together a luxurious and powerful bullpen like the Yankees.
It would be fine if the present Giants were a team that could reliably win by one run.
But the reality is the exact opposite, is it not?
Is not the real situation that they have scouts blind enough to reinforce the closer role with a miserable foreign pitcher?
Every opposing team must surely think that, against the Giants’ current bullpen, a one-run lead is almost the same as no lead at all.
To begin with, whether in Japan or the United States, this is now an era in which batting technique and data analysis of opposing pitchers have advanced, an era favoring hitters, an era of mass-produced home runs.
It is an era in which one must win by hitting.
Hara.
I think you are probably a good manager, but that bunt strategy alone is the worst.
The proof is that every time I see your bunt strategy…just the other day you even had Maru bunt…I lose my passion as a Giants fan and drift away from watching the games.
Is it not the case that you lack the viewpoint of valuing the fans?
A professional is supposed to keep winning while continuing to show the fans the thrilling hard hits and dominant pitching that fascinate them.
Along with the noisy cheering, one of the greatest reasons why my enthusiasm for Japanese professional baseball has long cooled and I have continued watching Major League Baseball is precisely Manager Hara’s tactic of making a good hitter bunt in the fourth inning, with one out and runners on first and third…even making Maru bunt…in the majors, one would never make Trout bunt, or Judge bunt…unless they had fallen into a truly severe batting slump.

While I was writing this, the news came on that China had fired six missiles on June 30, and here again China displayed its true nature as a country of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies,” the true nature of a one-party Communist dictatorship, by denying what the U.S. military had made clear and what countries around the world were reporting, and then saying that “the reporting is incorrect, and that they merely conducted live-fire exercises toward the waters of the South China Sea that China is illegally occupying.”
Aside from China and the Korean Peninsula, there is probably nowhere else in the world where a country would insist that missile launches are merely live-fire training exercises.