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Secretasianman

Monday - 4/21/09

What's Wrong With Wang? - These past two weeks have been tough for us Chien-Ming Wang fans as we watched our guy get crushed in three straight starts in nightmarish fashion. Each start seems worse than the previous one and his eight hit, 1-1/3 inning performance on Saturday against the Indians was too much for the Yankees. They are dropping him from the rotation this week so they can figure out how to help Wang reclaim his form. While there is great speculation that he may not be fully recovered from his injury, some believe that his form is simply off. He may be favoring his right foot because he is afraid to get injured again which led to his poor starts which hurt his confidence and form even more. I know that at this point, he has bigger things to worry about than getting re-injured, like simply keeping his spot on the rotation. Wang seems like a really good down-to-earth guy and I'm really pulling for him to regain his form.

Wang isn't lifting his left leg as high this year in his windup.

His posture is also bad as he is not standing up straight like he used to.

Friday - 4/17/09

Ichiro Suzuki breaks the Japanese Hits Record with his 3,086th wack of the bat. CONGRATULATIONS to Ichiro on another amazing milestone! Inch by inch Ichiro is making his way to the promised land.

Thursday - 4/9/09

HOLY COW FUKUDOME'S BACK! - Records three hits and a homer for his best game ever in the MLB. Redemption is sweet.

Rockets Ready for Playoff Takeoff – Two days after beating one of the best teams in the NBA, Houston held to form blowing away one of the worst. By beating the lowly Kings tonight 115-98 the Rockets moved past San Antonio into first place in the Southwest Division. It was the third straight game they have won, including their 98-83 Tuesday win over the Orlando Magic. Say what you want about Dwight Howard cause I would probably agree. The guy is a stud with shoulders as wide as a barn but he just cannot hang with Yao. As usual, the Great Wall proved to be impenetrable to Superman as he outplayed the younger grasshopper with 20 pts, 16 rebs compared to 13 & 10. Sports is all about matchups and this is one matchup that does not favor Howard even though the Magic have a better overall record than the Rockets.

Dwight has yet to figure out Yao Ming's ancient Chinese secrets on the court.

Asian Pitchers Tagged Hard in Debuts - Dice-K was the MVP for last month's World Baseball Classic but he didn’t look very valuable last night as he was touched for four runs in his debut game against the Rays. Three of those runs came from homers and he also allowed nine hits and three walks. He clearly wasn’t in full command of his pitches but Matsuzaka kept the Red Sox in the game despite his struggles but they ultimately still lost the game on his labored efforts.

Chien-Ming Wang was very excited about being back on the mound for the Yankees after his short season last year due to injury. Unfortunately he was a little too eager and that excitement and energy might have hurt him cause his sinker wasn't sinking and thus the Yankees were sunk. He was horrible in his first start on Wednesday as the Orioles roughed him up for seven runs on nine hits. Interestingly the Orioles ultimately won the game 7-5 with their own Asian pitcher, newly acquired Japanese right-hander Koji Uehara who looked sharp in his MLB debut. A longtime Japanese star, Uehara doesn't pitch very hard recording fastballs in the high 80s but he kept the Yankees off balance all night and allowed just one run in five innings. So it was a good/bad night for Asian pitching but Wanger's debut was disappointing for me. With CC Sabathia's poor performance in the opening game, this was the perfect chance for Wang to show his worth and to do better. Unfortunately he did worse.

When you see this picture, it's not good cause a bad day for Chien-Ming Wang is a bad day for the Yankees and a worse day for the Taiwanese stock market!

Thursday - 4/2/09

WBC Champions Back to Normal Life - Ichiro Suzuki and Daisuke Matsuzaka are back with their respective teams after the exhilarating defense of their World Baseball Classic title last month. Dice-K had fun this past week throwing against his fellow countryman Kenshin Kawakami of the Atlanta Braves. He pitched fairly well allowing two hits and an earned run over five innings in his first start back with the Red Sox. Kawakami who didn't participate in the Classic gave up a two-run homer to Rocco Baldelli for his only runs in six innings but the Braves rallied to beat the Sox 4-3. Dice-K said that he enjoys playing against other Japanese players and always keep an eye out on their performance.

One player he won't be able to track for a while is Ichiro Suzuki who has missed three straight games suffering from fatigue and lightheadedness. He will go to the doctor today to find out what is wrong as the Mariner's hold their collective breath. I'm hoping that he is just feeling a bit down from having to come back down to Earth after drifting on such a tremendous high for the past few weeks. I mean to him, winning the WBC for Japan is probably every bit as important as the World Series if not more so. We should get the results from his exam tomorrow. 

Who cares about spring training when you've just had the ride of your life?

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