Carp pitcher Kris Johnson hopes to help his team return to Hiroshima with a one game lead.
With his Hiroshima Carp tied with Hokkaido’s Nippon Ham Fighters at two
wins apiece, starting pitcher Kris Johnson will take the ball on Thursday for Game
5 to hopefully help his team get a leg up on the best-of-seven Japan Series. The left-hander has already had a busy week
starting with a Game 1 win in which he outdueled pitching/batting sensation
Shoehei Otani in a 5-1 win on October 23.
The next day, he was announced as the Sawamura Award winner given to the
NPB’s most outstanding pitcher.
After winning the ERA title in his first year in Japan in 2015, Johnson
was 15-7 while sporting a 2.15 ERA and striking out 141 batters in 180 1/3
innings. Johnson became the second foreign
born Sawamura Award winner in the history of Japanese baseball and the first
since Gen Bacque won the Cy Young equivalent in 1964 with a stellar 29-9 record
and 1.89 ERA in 353 1/3 (gasp!) innings.
“It’s a huge honor just to win
the award,” Johnson told Japan Times reporter Jason Coskrey in an interview on
Monday. “To be the second foreign player, that’s just a whole other level. I
looked up (Bacque’s) stats, and mine are nowhere near what he accomplished. Just
to be included in that, with his name, is an honor.”
It is the second consecutive year the Carp at
one of their pitcher’s win the Sawamura.
Last year, the honoree was none other than current Los Angeles Dodgers
pitcher Kenta Maeda.
This writer had the fortune to chat with Johnson last summer in
Hiroshima. It was a few weeks after he
signed a three-year contract extension and four days after my wife and I saw
Johnson pitch masterfully in an 8-2 win over the host Hanshin Tigers inside
Osaka’s hallowed Koshien Stadium on July 8. Getting
batters to swing and miss seemingly at will, Johnson kept the Tigers hitters
off-balance the entire game en route to a seven-inning, seven strikeouts, zero
earned runs allowed effort before an appreciative visiting crowd that included
a raucous and choreographed group of Carp fans in the left field upper deck. He smiled when I told him that it was our
first Japanese baseball game.
“You were at the game?” Johnson
said in his team’s spotless dugout prior to Hiroshima’s game against the Yomiuri Giants
that the Carp would win 13-3 behind Takahiro Arai’s two-homer, four hit, five
RBI game. “That’s great, glad you got to see it. You’re really going to like
watching a game here. It’s definitely another level (of enthusiasm here) maybe
more because of the fans.”
“The cities are bigger in the States, but you
find out that all the stadiums are sold out here almost everyday. Not only that, but your team might be up or
even down by 10, and they’re still cheering like you’re in a close game. When you’re up to bat, it’s a non-stop music
and cheering, dancing for whoever is at bat.”
“I’m still amazed that if a pitcher gives up 10 runs, our drums will
start banging, and then the crowd chants to try and pick you back up. There’s no negative attitude, you don’t get
the negative hecklers. I think my wife
heard one heckler in Yokohama, and that’s the only time in a year and half that
we heard it.”
After a few years in the minors in the U.S. and a three-game MLB stint
with Pittsburgh (2013) and Minnesota (2014) in MLB, Johnson is in no hurry to
come back home just yet – hence the three-year deal he signed in the middle of
his second season in Hiroshima. After
expressing gratitude towards team officials, coaches and teammates, he spoke of
the country itself.
“The Japanese culture itself is a peaceful culture,” Johnson said. “It’s
always positive and that’s what I think that my wife (Carly) and I love about
it. You can go anywhere and meet anybody
and they just shake your hand or want a picture with you. They just want to
connect.”
“Whenever we go around town, kids, people will come up for a photo to
shake my hand or just say ‘ganbatte’ (do
your best or fight!) They’re very respectful. If you’re doing something, I just say I’m
sorry I’m with my wife doing stuff and instead of complaining, they apologize
for bothering us, which they aren’t. I
love the interactions, things like taking selfies with kids.”
“I love how everyone from players to managers and the fans respect the
game. In Japan, baseball is huge, it’s the national support so everyone
recognizes you. Football you can’t see their faces, but in baseball we’re
always up on scoreboards and billboards, so they know what we look like. Some players will wear face masks when they
go out, but I don’t because it doesn’t bug me at all.”
At the time of this interview, the Carp had a 10-game lead that
eventually grew to a whopping 17.5 gap over the second place Giants by regular
season’s end to claim its first Central League title since 1991. In the Climax Series (the equivalent of the
LCS in MLB), Hiroshima took advantage of the one game-lead given to them by
virtue of winning the Central League and dispatched the DeNa Baystars with
relative ease 3-1. No matter what
happens in the Japan Series, this season’s result will surpass last year when
the Carp missed out on the playoffs by one game.
“Last year we had a lot of fun,” he said. “We lost a lot of one-run
games that we were just on the cusp of winning. A few things go the other way
and we win those things. But we still ended
up only one game out, which made it exciting towards the end.”
“This year has been different
because we have this lead, we’re playing loose and scoring a lot of runs while
the pitchers are doing what they need to do on the mound.”
In addition to his contributions during games, he added that he is
trying to help his fellow pitchers, especially the younger ones.
I was told I am one of the top guys between
pitches,” Johnson said. “I like to keep the time between pitches really short. It’s something I brought from the States and I
try to help the younger kids who are used to the traditional slow style of
Japanese baseball.”
He also is trying to help his teammates with his mind set.
“I learned to take the good and bad together and use a positive attitude
to figure out a way to make them both good,” Johnson said.
For him and his teammates, he hopes that the power of positive thinking
will help lead to a Hiroshima’s first Japan Series championship in 32 years.
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