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The story
Former pitcher Trevor Bauer, who played for the DeNA BayStars, posted on his own TikTok praising Japanese hitters’ knack for grinding out foul balls as a sign of outstanding contact skill — while bluntly admitting that Japanese baseball itself isn’t fun to watch. The discussion centered on NPB’s heavy use of sacrifice bunts and the existence of hitters who deliberately foul off pitch after pitch. On the 5ch Geisports Sokuho+ (entertainment/sports news) board, the thread ranged from pointed remarks like “that’s not really praise, it’s sarcasm” to a wider debate over NPB’s signature tactics themselves. Some posters also questioned Bauer’s own credentials, noting his Cy Young award came in a shortened season — leaving reactions to his comment split right down the middle.
Bauer’s unfiltered, no-holds-barred take: “Japanese baseball is boring” — bland as it is… but one skill left him stunned: “incredible”
Pitcher Trevor Bauer, who played for the DeNA BayStars, posted an update to his own TikTok on the 23rd (the 24th in Japan time), talking about how hard it is to strike out Japanese hitters.
While letting slip his honest opinion that “Japanese baseball isn’t interesting,” he also praised Japanese hitters’ skill, calling their contact ability “incredible.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
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There's probably something flawed about it as a sport
that's why it's stayed ultra-niche forever lol
end up being pretty unremarkable in NPB anyway?
Well, it was just a Cy Young from a shortened season, after all
That's definitely laying it on thick
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/495ca75703a0a3b0989b5ba48ae2c34d8c1f4454
Bauer: "There were three zombies out there, it was genuinely terrifying"
Is the writer playing dumb on purpose, fully aware it's sarcastic
Or are they just too dense to catch the irony
❌ Japanese baseball is boring
⭕ Baseball is boring
That's the correct answer 😉
the second someone reaches on a hit, it's an automatic sacrifice bunt — unwatchable at this point
how do people not get sick of it
isn't there a style with a bit more unpredictability to it
'Theory' plays get used because they're statistically the better bet
There's nothing wrong with orthodox baseball
So-called unpredictable tactics only work because they're rare — use them too often and teams just start guarding against them
By the way, the strongest approach of all is 'yokozuna sumo' — winning by taking on the opponent head-on with no gimmicks at all (a reference to the dominant, no-tricks-needed style of a sumo grand champion)
Definitely ranks above MLB.
stadiums are literally empty as proof
baseball itself is just boring
you'd have to be an idiot not to get sick of it lol
He's still got to make money after he retires, you'd think
it's hard to stay exciting.
Nothing beats the tension of a single do-or-die game.
They should just scrap pro baseball and MLB entirely,
and have everyone keep living in a dorm with a shaved head
playing high school baseball
even at 20, even at 30.
tap it, tap it, then sprint — that's Japanese baseball
Background and key points of this discussion
Bauer pitched for the DeNA BayStars in 2023 and remains a polarizing figure partly because his Cy Young award came in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season — a point raised in the thread too (‘it’s just an award from a shortened season anyway’). This latest comment actually separates two distinct reactions: astonishment at Japanese hitters’ foul-ball-grinding technique, and discomfort with NPB’s heavy reliance on sacrifice bunts — praise and criticism sitting side by side in the same remark, which makes it easy to misread. The thread split over whether to take the comment as ‘an insult to Japanese baseball’ or ‘an honest assessment of skill,’ with one side defending bunt- and sacrifice-centered strategy (‘theory plays are statistically sound’) against another side that simply finds it boring to watch. Note that Bauer’s own on-field performance in Japan isn’t actually the focus of this article and only comes up as a tangent within the thread.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geisports Sokuho+) thread ‘[Baseball] Bauer’s unfiltered, no-holds-barred take: “Japanese baseball is boring” — bland as it is… but one skill left him stunned: “incredible”‘.
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