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The story
On the 13th, the Chunichi Dragons announced that four coaches — Nobuhiko Matsunaka, Ryosuke Hirata, Eiji Ochiai, and Yutaka Nakamura — will leave the team at the end of this season. Speculation is strong that Kimiyasu Kudo will take over as the new manager, and this coaching shake-up is seen as part of a broader restructuring in which the front office is said to be holding the reins on personnel decisions. On 5ch threads, some posters said the accomplished Ochiai shouldn’t have trouble finding his next job, while many others noted it’s hard to predict where Matsunaka or Hirata will land next. The discussion also grew heated over conflicting views: some argued the coaching staff itself wasn’t the problem — the manager was — while others took issue with the team filling the roles mostly with former players (OBs).
What people said
But Matsunaka and Hirata…
Wonder what they'll do
Matsunaka was brought in by Inoue
Same prefecture (Kagoshima), same generation
I think Inoue was a year or two above Matsunaka in school
Since Inoue resigned, Matsunaka's probably stepping down too
And Asao staying on makes it even funnier
They said they'd at least listen to his input, so it's not like he has zero say at all
Wouldn't be surprising if another team scoops up Matsunaka
Asao and Yamai are probably future manager candidates, so they probably didn't want to tarnish their résumés
He said so himself at a talk show
This team's got zero drive
Guess the merch sales must've been that good
It was the manager who was the problem
Matsunaka and Hirata's exits look front-office-driven, so Kudo probably isn't thrilled about that
Shima might be better suited for something like Yakult's farm team
Wish he could've at least joined the front office and kept pushing reforms
Matsunaka's from Kumamoto though
I meant to write "same Kyushu" and typo'd it
SoftBank took many years to get where they are too, it'll take a long time to reach that same scale
So he must be good
Kudo's got a great eye for talent, that's why he's won so many titles
It's sad as a fan knowing Manager Kudo's reputation is going to crash and burn over the next few years 😭
Even Oh alone took 10 years
It took 5 years just to get to the raw-egg incident (fans famously threw eggs at his car during a losing streak)
Well, SoftBank's going to win no matter who the coaches are
But he still brought in guys like Iguchi as coaches, so maybe he's surprisingly cut out for coaching after all
In 2005 he won two of the three crowns, and his batting average was still good in 2006
He dropped off in 2007 but bounced back a bit in 2008
It's really from 2009 onward that it got bad
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Of the four coaches whose departures were announced, Eiji Ochiai and Yutaka Nakamura had long handled infield and baserunning instruction, Ryosuke Hirata was in charge of outfield defense, and Nobuhiko Matsunaka — brought in from SoftBank — handled batting. On 5ch, all sorts of speculation is flying about next season’s setup and who actually holds the reins on personnel decisions, but the only fact the team has confirmed is that the four coaches will leave at the end of this season; as of this writing, no successors or next destinations for any of them have been decided. Views on the coaching staff itself are also split, with some supporting the shake-up and others questioning why only the coaches are being replaced when the manager was the real problem — readers should keep the speculation in the thread separate from the facts the team has actually announced.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “Chunichi Announces Departure of Coaches Matsunaka, Hirata, Ochiai Eiji, and Nakamura Yutaka.”
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