LF Ken'ichi Okubo
3B Hitoshi Kitamura
Okubo: 大丈夫ですか？ (Daijoubu desu ka?) Are you okay?
Kitamura: はい、大丈夫です。 (Hai, daijoubu desu.) Hai, I'm okay.
Okay, that's the limits of my Japanese, and I swear I leaned it on Duolingo and not on other types of websites.
Okubo and Kitamura are holding a tea ceremony in the otherwise empty D-Lab at 3a.m., when they regularly call their wives back home in Japan. With such a schedule it's amazing that they both had outstanding results this spring in the DMO Development Center.
Kitamura, acquired 11 months ago from Charm City for JRamirez's least favorite first baseman Bane McCoy, posted officially "outstanding" results in the D-Lab per Kernels batting instructor José Gonzáles, who's starting his ninth season in Des Moines. McCoy played in 151 games in 2060 for the Jimmies, mostly at leadoff, where he posted a .399 OBP, largely due to 116 base-on-balls. He had a WAR of 2.2 for the 104-game-winning CCJ and stayed healthy most the year, something he couldn't do in Des Moines. He had a dismal performance in the Cartwright Cup versus Montreal, which sent the Jimmies home and the wild card Blazers to an ill-fated matchup in the Brewster Memorial Series.
Kitamura, meanwhile, did not surface in the bigs until September, when he posted an .874 OPS in 24 games versus mostly second-division Heartland teams. Before that he had hit .314-18-79 (.888 OPS) at AAA El Paso. His power rating was just low enough to make him seem a dubious ML third baseman candidate, but JR and Gonzáles had faith in the 24-year-old and, after rigorous training in the D-Lab, he "outstandingly completed training to generate more batspeed (sic) and homerun power," which resulted in a visible power rating increase from 6 to 7. He has two or three option years last and could yet become a ML starting third baseman.
His tea-ceremony co-celebrant, Okubo, raised his visible power rating from 5 to 7, and he still has potential growth. Okubo had been sitting there without a job at 5/5/4 and he was cut by Vancouver in June, 2059. Five weeks later JR signed him to a minor league contract, and Gonzáles and his minor-league equivalents started to work his/their magic. In 2061 Okubo rose from A-ball to AA and then on to AAA and figures to start there this season, with his newfound 6/8/5 potential. JR is counting on Okubo and newly-signed Wan-ling Koo, 4/8/8 to make up for left fielder Kevin Thistle's unfortunate slide to a 6 power rating, although perhaps that will go back up.
"Looking at last season's team, we saw room for improvement in power production at the left field position," JR said. "Kevin dipped to 15 homers last year and, you know I love the guy and his development as fine human being. But, as that guy once said, 'fine human beings finish last'. So we decided to go hard for Wan-ling, and having Okubo blossom like a Japanese cherry tree, that's wonderful. はい、大丈夫です。 (Yes, I'm all right [with that]). It does make Thistle expendable and anyone who's read this far can have him.
"But not cheap, though," JR clarified.
