Foreign Player Signing Summary
I haven’t done a great job of staying up to date with NPB transactions this offseason. To catch up on things, here’s my tally of who’s signed so far this autumn:
- Bryan Bullington signed with Hiroshima
- Chad Tracy signed with Hiroshima
- Dennis Sarfate signed with Hiroshima
- Jonathan Albaladejo signed with Yomiuri
- Carlos Torres signed with Yomiuri.
- Micah Hoffpauir signed with Nippon Ham
- Marcos Vechionacci is about to sign as an ikusei player with Hanshin.
- Robert Zarate signed as an ikusei player with Hanshin
- Wladimir Balentien signed with Yakult
In addition, Hiroshima added Scott McClain as a US-based scout.
This year, I published my list of picks for Japan-bound players over at FanGraphs. So far I’ve gotten two correct, Bullington and Torres. I took a long look at Sarfate and Albaladejo, but I left Sarfate off because of his walk rate, and Albaladejo off because I thought he’d get a job in the Majors. I also asked FanGraphs’ readers to suggest players who could go over, and so far that list has produced one correct prediction, Hoffpauir.