While most of the western WBC teams aren’t going to reveal their full rosters until January, Japan has already come up with a provisional roster of 34 players. Eventually, they will cut it down to 28 players, but for now, here’s an analysis of their provisional roster. As expected, they have no MLB players, due to the fact they all bailed out. Ichiro, for example, may be with a new team and apparently said after the ’09 Classic that he was unlikely to play in it again because he wants to have gone out on top. Yu Darvish is worried about how his body will be after throwing so much last season. Hiroki Kuroda is old.

So, instead, Japan will be sending an NPB all-star team. Many of these guys could play in MLB if they wanted to and some of them still may. One of them- Kazuo Matsui– was once an MLB player. And, of course, they will have been preparing for a month or more for the tournament, as opposed to the week or so that most of the western teams will.

Don’t underestimate them. Instead, go after the jump for my analysis.

Continue reading →