Free Agency Watch: Kawakami, Takahashi, Saito

» 13 December 2008 » In mlb »

Today’s free agency updates…

  • In a reversal of previously published reports, Mets GM Omar Minaya was quoted in Hochi Sports as saying he’s basically thinking of Koji Uehara as a starter, and will negotiate with him as such. Hochi also said the Red Sox are interested, which is the first time I’ve seen them explicitly linked to Uehara.
  • Ken Takahashi’s representatives have talked to about 90% of the MLB teams, and 10 have shown interest. The Mets are favored at this point, and Takahashi wants to decide on a destination by year’s end if possible.

Tags: , , ,

Trackback URL

  1. Patrick
    simon
    13/12/2008 at 1:22 pm Permalink

    That Kawakami offer looks like a bargain (even back of the rotation free agent guys make more than twice that), it seems like the Sox now have the Japanese pitchers market cornered for whatever reason.

  2. Patrick
    simon
    13/12/2008 at 1:23 pm Permalink

    Oh, $7m/year, that makes more sense.

  3. Patrick
    Patrick
    13/12/2008 at 2:17 pm Permalink

    Ahh, lemme correct that. My style is to report the total value of the contract.

  4. Patrick
    Deanna
    13/12/2008 at 5:53 pm Permalink

    Man, how happy I’d be if, like, the Fighters lured Takashi Saitoh back to Japan to be their closer 🙂 SO HAPPY.

    Or even the Baystars. Terahara could use a mentor…

    Oh well, I can dream.

    I really hope Kenshin will go to an NL team — I still have a dream of seeing him hit a home run in person someday. It was the one of my Three Chunichi Goals for this year (the other two being seeing a Masa start and getting my photo with Doala) that I didn’t manage to accomplish. I suppose seeing Dragonbutt Morino hit an outside-the-stadium home run right over my head almost made up for it, but still.

    Plus this “half of Japan follows Golden Boy to Boston” thing has GOT TO STOP. NOW. 🙂

  5. Patrick
    Patrick
    14/12/2008 at 1:06 pm Permalink

    Man, how happy I’d be if, like, the Fighters lured Takashi Saitoh back to Japan to be their closer SO HAPPY.

    Saito said after his first year in the bigs that he’d be open to returning to Japan, so it could happen. He does have a partially torn elbow ligament, so he’s a health risk at this point.

    I’d love to see him go back to Japan and show a whole team of pitchers what he did in America to be so much more effective than he was in Japan.

Trackbacks

  1. [...] Mets are the front-runners to sign Japanese free-agent reliever Ken Takahashi, according to NPB Tracker, the premiere resource for Japanese…

  2. [...] news about possible Mets far east exports was reported by NPB Tracker. According to Hochi Sports, Omar Minaya was…

  3. [...] Saturday, NPB Tracker said Mets are the front-runners to sign Japanese free-agent LHP Ken Takahashi, who was [...]

  4. [...] month, NPB Tracker said the Mets are the front-runners to sign Japanese free-agent LHP Ken Takahashi, [...]

  5. [...] December, NPB Tracker said the Mets were the front-runners to sign Takahashi, who was was 8-5 with a 3.50…

  6. [...] December, NPB Tracker said the Mets were the front-runners to sign Takahashi, who was was 8-5 with a 3.50…