This article is part of our DFS NPB series.
The first weekend of NPB action saw just a single sweep, with the defending Central League champion Giants taking all three games against the Tigers by a total score of 21-4. Scoring was quite low throughout the league, as one might expect given that each team could use its top three starters. The low numbers were concentrated in the Pacific League -- oddly enough, the league that uses the designated hitter -- where teams combined to score just 2.8 runs per game. The six Central League sides averaged 4.2 runs, the same mark as last year. We should see more runs during the upcoming set, as teams' backend starters take the hill for the first time.
Pitchers
Haruhiro Hamaguchi ($9,700) had the best season of his three-year NPB career at age 24 last year, posting personal bests in ERA (3.17) and WHIP (1.18). He backed those numbers up with a strong 24.9 percent strikeout rate. While his 11.1 percent walk rate is higher than you'd like, a high-strikeout, high-walk arm is typically better than the opposite for fantasy purposes. That strikeout upside makes him a strong value play as a mid-priced option who gets to face a Dragons lineup which ranked ninth out of 12 teams in runs per game last season.
Gabriel Ynoa ($12,000) is expensive and unproven at the NPB level, but as a pitcher with parts of three seasons of MLB experience, he's an intriguing option here. He wasn't particularly good at the highest level, posting a 5.39 ERA in 163.2 innings for the Mets and Orioles, as his low 15.4 percent strikeout rate more than offset his solid 5.7 percent walk rate. Still, it's safe to assume his numbers will improve with the drop in competition. The 27-year-old is especially interesting Tuesday because he gets to face the Tigers, who scored the fewest runs in the league last year and who have scored just four runs through their first three games this season.
Veteran lefty Kris Johnson ($9,300) faces a tough matchup against the Giants, who finished second in scoring and who have scored five more runs than anyone else so far this season, but he has the talent to be worth a look nonetheless. The 35-year-old owns a career 2.54 ERA and a 1.19 WHIP in his five NPB campaigns and showed no signs of slowing down last year, cruising to a 2.59 ERA and a 1.21 WHIP. His 20.3 percent strikeout rate and 8.9 percent walk rate were hardly elite, but he's had success in this league for several years despite similar numbers, so there's little reason to believe that will stop now.
Top Targets
Seiya Suzuki ($8,700) has been one of the best hitters through the first three games of the season, sitting third in fantasy points per game on the back of five hits, five RBI and two homers. The 25-year-old was one of the best all-around hitters in the league last season, hitting .335/.453/.565 with 28 homers and 25 steals while combining a 16.8 percent walk rate with a 13.2 percent strikeout rate. He has what looks to be a good matchup against 20-year-old Shosei Togoh, who's thrown just 8.2 career NPB innings.
Tetsuto Yamada ($7,900) is perhaps an even better all-around offensive talent than Suzuki. The potential future MLB player has three seasons with 30 homers, 30 steals and a .300 batting average, something no one else has done more than once in NPB history. It may be hard for him to reach those counting-stat plateaus in a shortened season, but he's started on the right foot, hitting a pair of homers and stealing a base in the Swallows' weekend series against the Dragons. He'll face Tigers righty Koyo Aoyagi, who recorded a 3.14 ERA last season, though he struck out just 16.6 percent of opposing batters.
Bargain Bats
Sho Nakata ($4,800) had a strong first series of the season for the Fighters, going 3-for-10 with a pair of doubles and a homer while driving in three runs. The veteran slugger owns a modest .253 career batting average at the start of his 12th NPB campaign, but he's hit 24 or more homers in seven of his last eight seasons. He'll get the platoon advantage batting out of the cleanup spot against Golden Eagles' southpaw Hayato Yuge, a 26-year-old with just 43.1 career NPB innings under his belt.
Adam Jones ($5,600) started his NPB career well enough, going 3-for-10 with a walk and a double in his first three games for the Buffaloes. He's a surprisingly affordable mid-priced option considering his extensive MLB experience, and while his numbers dropped off to mediocre .260/.313/.414 in his age-33 season last year, he deserves plenty of respect for what he accomplished in his 14 seasons at the highest level. He'll likely bat cleanup against Marines righty Kota Futaki, who posted a pedestrian 4.41 ERA last season.
Stacks To Consider
Hawks vs. Kona Takahashi: Wladimir Balentien ($7,300), Yuki Yanagita ($6,400), Ryoya Kurihara ($3,100)
Heading into his age-23 season, Takahashi has already spent parts of five seasons at the NPB level, but he's yet to find much success, posting a career 4.25 ERA and a 1.50 WHIP. He was slightly worse than that in 2019, struggling to a 4.51 ERA and a 1.54 WHIP. It's hard to say he deserved much better, as he struck out just 16.2 percent of opposing batters. The defending-champion Hawks scored a total of just five runs in their opening series against the Marines, but a game against the young righty should help their bats wake up.
Balentien didn't do much in parts of three MLB seasons from 2007 to 2009, hitting just .221/.281/.374, but he's since gone on to have a decade worth of success in Japan. At the start of his 10th season, his first playing for anyone other than the Swallows, he owns a career .273/.378/.557 slash line. He's hit over 30 home runs in each of his eight full seasons and broke the legendary Sadaharu Oh's single-season record with 60 bombs back in 2013. The 35-year-old Curaçao native showed no signs of slowing down last season, hitting .280 with 33 homers.
Yanagita has been the best hitter in a cold Hawks lineup through his first three games, going 2-for-8 with a homer, four walks and a steal. The 31-year-old number three hitter will get the platoon advantage against Takahashi and could be in for another big day Tuesday. He was limited to just 38 games last season due to a knee injury, but he hit .352 with 36 homers and 21 steals in 2018.
The 23-year-old Kurihara has shown very little in 49 career NPB games, hitting just .231/.292/.338, but he looked good in 55 minor-league games last season, hitting .323/.362/.564. He's been trusted with one of the top two spots in the Hawks order in each of the first three games this season and has looked worthy of the role, going 5-for-14 with a pair of doubles. With the platoon advantage in a prime lineup position against one of the weaker starters on the slate, Kurihara looks like a great value play at his very cheap price.
Marines vs. Andrew Albers: Takashi Ogino ($6,400), Brandon Laird ($6,200), Seiya Inoue ($6,300)
The Marines, who finished fourth in scoring last season, feature yet again in this section despite scoring a modest nine runs in their first series of the year, as they're a good bet to put up quite a few runs against Albers. The veteran lefty was quite good in his 2018, his first season in NPB, finishing with a 3.08 ERA and a 1.11 WHIP. He fell off a cliff last year, struggling to a 5.83 ERA and a 1.48 WHIP in just 63.1 innings. His 3.6 percent walk rate was quite strong, but he couldn't put hitters away, posting a low 16.2 percent strikeout rate, so there's little reason to expect a significant bounceback this year in his age-34 campaign.
Leadoff man Ogino, who will get the platoon advantage against the southpaw, seems like a great place to start this stack. He's gotten off to a hot start this year, grabbing five hits and stealing two bases in his first three games. The 34-year-old seems to be reaching a new level in the latter stages of his career, as he posted career highs in batting average (.315), homers (10) and steals (28) last season.
Cleanup hitter Laird has started the season strong as well, going 3-for-9 with a homer and four walks in his first three contests. While he doesn't make a ton of contact, he's established himself as a quality power bat, hitting .242/.315/.480 at the start of his sixth NPB season while averaging 32.6 homers per year. He has something of a strikeout problem, whiffing in 23.0 percent of his career plate appearances in Japan, but that should be less of an issue against Albers.
Inoue bats later than you'd like, hitting seventh in each of the Marines' first three games, but he nevertheless seems like a better option than the lefties who occupy most of the spots ahead of him. Like Ogino and Laird, he's started 2020 on the right foot, going 4-for-10 with a homer and four RBI. The 30-year-old first baseman is something of a late bloomer, as he'd hit just four career homers through the 2017 campaign, his age-27 season. He hit 24 long bombs in each of the last two seasons, however, and looks set for another similar year in 2020.
