Here we are in 2025 and those Nippon Ham Fighters might have the best — not most high tech, not newest, but best — stadium in the world. Instead of building a ballpark village, or saying that everything will build up around it if the city will just build it, Nippon Ham has created a new paradigm and I’m here to wonder if anyone is listening in MLB? This stadium feels like someone asked “What does this team, this city, these fans need right here, right now?” and not “What would have been cool in 1992 Baltimore?”
I’m all for the Sydney Opera House in Vegas, if it gets built and if it looks anything like that when it does. I kind of liked the undersized St. Pete Crystal Cathedral. But this thing in Hokkaido? I’m ready to book a ticket over and fight some ham myself. I haven’t been to the new Globe Life (one of two cards left unpunched of the 30 current stadiums for me) but it’s not the prettiest place. I’ve been in Arlington in the old yard, standing on the field when the temp said 107, so I get it. Form is secondary to function, especially at that extreme.
For me, this stadium is kind of the same. It’s much better on the inside than out. There’s elements of right-sizing, taking elements from many previous stadiums and putting it in the right place for a team and a city to take advantage. It seems like the idea of a hotel wasn’t just forgotten in Toronto, but integrated into an experience and even into a team culture.
In MLB, we’re now well past the post-Camden boom, and the consequences are starting to show. The retro-nostalgia parks that felt like breakthroughs in the '90s and early 2000s - brick facades, exposed steel, the odd warehouse with a cornerstone laid by my ancestors - are aging out of their moment. In some cases, they’re already gone. Turner Field barely made it twenty years. The first Globe Life Park got less time than a Nissan Leaf battery. These weren’t cathedrals. They were compromise builds, stuck between aesthetics and revenue models. They worked, mostly, until they didn’t.
The template hardened quickly: build near downtown (or pretend to), add a “village” concept even if no one lives there, promise to revitalize an area with beer gardens and mid-tier steakhouses, then pray that it fills up 81 times a year and more when the Dave Matthews Band comes through. The Fighters didn’t copy this model. They looked at their fans, their climate, their market, and their sport and then they built something that made sense. Not to civic pride or billionaire egos, but to baseball.
Start with the hotel. In most MLB stadiums, the idea of staying in the same building as the team — as fans, as media, as opposing players — feels like a Disney fantasy or a lawsuit waiting to happen. But in Hokkaido, it’s a given. It’s a way of extending the game day beyond three hours. You’re not just attending a game, you’re inhabiting it. There’s a level of immersion that’s usually reserved for theme parks or college football Saturdays and yet it feels calm. Practical. Like of course this is how it should work.
There’s restraint here. It’s not the biggest stadium. It’s not the flashiest. It’s not trying to be a tech showcase or a civic savior. It nails the fundamentals: sightlines, acoustics, comfort, access, food that doesn’t make you feel like you’re doing penance. There’s space to breathe. Not just literally, though the climate-controlled design helps, but conceptually. It’s not crammed with gimmicks. There’s no random shipping container bar or left field Ferris wheel. You can actually watch a baseball game.
Here’s the part that should make every MLB owner choke on their club-level sushi: it cost around $530 million. Not billion. That’s less than the Twins spent to remodel Target Field and pretend it was new. Less than half what Vegas will likely spend to create a glowing orb with a bullpen. That includes the hotel, the dome, and the surrounding infrastructure. Why? Because they didn’t gold-plate it. They designed it smart, not big. Could that happen in Tampa or Kansas? Sure, if someone wanted to build something that works for fans instead of just checking boxes for future resale value.
Meanwhile, what’s MLB doing? Two teams are in minor league stadiums, for very different reasons but the optics are the same. In Chicago, the White Sox are flirting with relocation, as if moving a few miles will fix what years of bad vibes and worse rosters haven’t. In the places where stadiums are “working,” like Atlanta or St. Louis, they’re mostly malls with a field tacked on.
There’s a lesson here, but it’s hard to imagine the league listening. The Japanese model isn’t just different, it’s patient. It takes time to build something that fits. MLB likes deals that fit on a napkin and can be pitched in two PowerPoints and a luxury box tour. But here we are, watching a team called the Fighters lead the way. Maybe the fight isn’t over revenue or relocation. Maybe it’s over attention to detail and who still cares enough to get it right. Maybe that should be a question for all the new owners coming in.
The best stadium in baseball is thousands of miles away, built by a sausage company, and maybe that’s the point.
On to the injuries:
FRANCISCO LINDOR, SS NYM (fractured toe)
It wasn’t a late night stub, but a foul ball that broke Francisco Lindor’s fifth toe. As with Mookie Betts, there’s not a whole lot that can be done for a broken toe. You protect it and wait for it to heal, but it really comes down to pain tolerance and function. The trick is making sure that it doesn’t get set back or inflamed, allowing it to heal up and get back to normal.
In the meantime, Lindor’s likely out through the weekend as it calms down. With the mechanics of how it happened, he’s likely to wear some sort of toe guard, either inside or outside the shoe, at least in the short term. There’s some concern with how it might affect his motion at short, but there’s also the option to have him DH some, with both Luisangel Acuna and Ronny Mauricio capable on defense.
KYLE TUCKER, OF CHC (sprained finger)
I mentioned to a friend the other day that Kyle Tucker is about to join the $500m club and my friend, a casual baseball fan at best, promptly replied “who?” Tucker is the most invisible star in the game in quite a while, despite being very good for a while now and winning a ring. His almost complete lack of black ink is stunning, especially for a player that’s been largely healthy outside of his quirky shin situation last season.
Tucker’s missed a couple days this week with a sprained finger. (Read Wednesday’s piece on Jasson Dominguez if you want to know why I hate the term “jammed.”) So far, it doesn’t appear to be anything more than a simple capsule sprain and he shouldn’t miss much more time. The worry is grip strength and bat control, which led me to an interesting idea and why this isn’t just a Quick Cut.
With the new metrics we have via Statcast (and more for teams), do any of these give a good early sign for grip strength and bat control? It used to be we’d look for even “doubles power” when someone was coming back, but now, things like 90EV and even bat speed are better indicators. The best appears to be Squared-Up Contact rate, which is available via Savant. I did a very rough correlation on an admittedly small sample size with finger, thumb, and wrist injuries and getting back to the normal rate is seemingly the best indication that the swing is back to normal and is slightly ahead of exit velocity as a predictor. That bears a much deeper study by someone better at the maths than me!
Anyway, Tucker’s return will add to the sample we have of players coming back, being tracked with new stats, and I’m sure that the Cubs have something they can track as someone is testing out their swing back under the bleachers.
More below on Twins’ teres tears, Roki’s return, more boom in the Bronx, and much more, only for subscribers.