So the Royals have signed Yasuhiko Yabuta, the Indians Masa Kobayashi, and there's a lot of talk about Hiroki Kuroda. Again MLB teams are turning to Japan in an effort to get pitching help in a thin free agent field. Here's a little of what to expect:
Japanese pitchers tend to be overvalued due to a different system. Starters in particular are prone to this. Japanese baseball runs 6 days a week, with a 6 man starting rotation. That means that Japanese pitchers tend to pitch once every 7 days instead of once every 5 or 6 days for American pitchers. This may not seem like a big deal, but over the course of an entire season it can mean a lot for a pitcher. Speaking of an entire season, they play less games in a season. Japanese Players play maximum 140 games in a season, with the two teams going directly to the world series rather than playoffs. This is probably the cause of Daisuke Matsuzaka's late season meltdown, and has been the case with many Japanese Pitchers.
Japanese baseball also uses a smaller ball, and pitch closer to the plate (albeit on a smaller mound.) And not to be stereotypical, but they pitch to less skilled batters in my opinion. I mean, Japan routinely imports players from the American Minor Leagues and they're stars. Leron Lee and Leroy Lee (Derrek Lee's father and uncle) were huge stars there, as are many perennial Minor Leaguers. This isn't because Americans are just better, but more because the MLB imports the best from everywhere else (Japan, Latin America, Canada, etc.)
What this does mean is that more and more Japanese teams and players are looking to work with American teams in order to fulfill their own monetary needs, as are the players. Ever since Hideo Nomo used the same loophole to get out of his obligations that Messersmith and McNally used to get out of their MLB contracts, the system has been getting closer and closer to embracing it. When Nomo originally did it, he was disowned by his family, and basically exiled from Japanese Baseball. Nowadays even when huge stars like Daisuke and Ichiro come over, the nation follows them with great interest, to see how their best perform among America's best.
I don't anticipate much from the new imports. I tend to like Japanese hitters more than pitchers for the aforementioned reasons, since they have proven they can beat a system that's a little slanted against them. Plus, none of these guys are hot prospects -- Kobayashi is 33, Yabuta is 34, and Kuroda is 32. While one may point to Takashi Saito as a foil to this theory, Saito, but Saito is better than these guys. Saito is a four time Japanese All-Star, with a fastball that's been clocked at 99 (the fastest of any MLB Japanese pitcher.) Look for these guys to be much like Hideki Okajima at best -- solid middle relievers, but not too much more.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Andy:
Good sense of history there. These teams are $$ strapped which is why guys like Dice-K, Ichiro, and Matsui and some smaller ticket items have left.
Pitchers from Japan have a tendency to underproduce due to those usage issues. Okajima was a nice diamond in the rough. I really don't know what to expect from these guys. Look @ their K/9 rate and how many people they walk. A lot of those guys end up hittable (Takatsu) or have shorter shelf lives (Sasaki).
It doesn't hurt though since Okajima was meant to be nothing more than Daisuke's buddy. How they assimilate culturally also figures big-time into this. Rust belt cities like Cleveland and plains cities like KC are a little different from either rim.
I would imagine that most teams wouldn't object to selling contracts to American teams. Japanese baseball teams are also PR/publicity units for major corporations (The Yomiuri Giants are owned by the Yomiuri Newspaper company, the Tigers by the Hanshin railway company, etc.)
Hopefully these newcomers won't get Yi Jianlian syndrome and demand to be traded to a more Asian-friendly city. Japanese players, for the most part, of "anything for the team," so they'll at least take any harsh situational factors with quiet dignity.
What kind of money are these guys getting? Do you think it makes sense for a "Moneyball" club like the A's, who could benefit greatly at the gate from an expanded Japanese-American fan base, to go after a Japanese reliever? Obviously the A's can't get into big-name free agents but if they could establish a Japanese connection they could draw on the large Japanese-American population in the Bay Area for fannies-in-the-seats. Eh?
They're drawing pretty darn good money from what I've seen. Yabuta is getting 5-6 million for two years, Kobayashi 6 million over two years, etc. Considering we prefer to hunt down the 1 year $1 million Shannon Stewarts of the world, paying 3 million a year for a middle reliever just isn't (or certainly shouldn't) be in the cards for us.
The thing is that middle relief, while a big part of the team, is fairly easy to get if you're looking for it. If a middle reliever is struggling, you just don't pitch him. It's not as big a hit if you're closer, starter, or position players are struggling, since they are supposed to have every day impact.
Post a Comment