Nippon Ham Fighters freshman manager Yasunori Oshima will be faced with a dilemma of sorts when the 2000 Pacific League baseball season begins April 1. He's got three quality foreign hitters but, once the exhibition schedule comes to an end, he'll only be able to play two of them. Japanese baseball rules being what they are, only two foreign position players and two foreign pitchers may be registered at a time on each team's varsity roster.
Actually, several teams have more than four non-Japanese players under contract. The Fighters have seven, as do the Hiroshima Carp, Yakult Swallows and Chunichi Dragons. But those teams have a lot of first-year and young players expected to serve time developing on the farm. In the Nippon Ham situation, no matter how you look at it, one quality player will have to be dropped from the F's first team non-pitchers roster after March 26.
The trio consists of, in alphabetical order: