A brief update, to show you all that I have a pulse…
Ricky Barrett and Andy Sisco both failed their in-camp auditions with Yokohama. “They couldn’t exceed our expectations in the intrasquad games,” said a team representative.
Another former BayStars lefty, Naoya Okamoto, will be in camp with the Mexico City Reds this spring. Okamoto, along with Shigetoshi Yamakita, was headed toward an invite to the Phillies’ minor league camp, but negotiations reportedly took a turn for the worse and eventually concluded with no deal. Yamakita’s plans are unknown.
Hiroshima brought John Bale back on a budget deal. Bale should provide some lefty pitching depth, along with fellow returnee Ken Takahashi.
Also congratulations to NPB Tracker reader Chris Gissell, who recently signed a minor league deal with Colorado.
2009 went by super fast. Here are my top ten events in Japanese baseball for the year that was.
10. Koji Uehara, Kenshin Kawakamisign with MLB teams; Yomiuri, Chunichi don’t notice. Uehara and Kawakami both signed with MLB clubs early in 2009, meanwhile, their former teams finished 1-2 in the Central League, with Yomiuri taking the Japan Series Championship.
9. Tuffy Rhodes hits 450th NPB home run. Tuffy continued his remarkable comeback in 2009, reaching 450 homers early in the season. A healthy 2010 will see him reach 500.
8. Rakuten makes first ever post season appearance as Katsuya Nomura retires. Rakuten to reached the second round of the playoffs in their fifth year of existence and appears to have a bright near-term future. Nomura restored his legacy with Rakuten after arguably failing to revive Hanshin and his wife’s ugly tax fraud problems.
7. Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium opens. Japan’s first new stadium in years opens to rave reviews, and while the Carp look competitive at times, they ultimately slump to a fifth-place finish.
6. Yusei Kikuchi stays in Japan; gets selected by only six teams in draft. After a lengthy cross-Pacific courting process, Kikuchi gave into social pressures and choose to stay in Japan and enter the NPB draft. After speculation that he could get picked by 10 or 11 teams,he winds up getting taken by six, with the remaining six teams grabbing other players uncontested. He eventually signs a max contract with Seibu.
5. Hideki Matsui wins World Series MVP. Matsui leaves NY in style with a dominant World Series performance, despite not starting any of the games played in Philadelphia.
4. Bobby Valentine leaves Marines. Bobby V goes back to Connecticut after a successful six-year run with Chiba Lotte, in which he turned around a moribund franchise and became one of the finest advocates for Japanese baseball in the West.
3. Yomiuri wins first title since 2002. It took seven years for Yomiuri to win a Japan Series post-Matsui. The Giants won three times in his ten-year Giants career (1994, 2000, 2002).
Despite the fact that we’ve known for some time that Hisanori Takahashi would a candidate to jump to MLB this offseason, the Yomiuri lefty hasn’t gotten much virtual ink on this site. I’ve actually had a draft profile on him sitting un-started since June, but time has been an issue this year and I’ve prioritized other content.
Instead of an in-depth profile, I’ll give a quick bird’s eye view of Takahashi and his MLB credentials:
Turns 35 on April 2, 2010
Is coming off a solid 2009 campaign: 10-6, 2.94 ERA, 121/36 K/BB in 144 IP
Made 135m yen ($1.3m) in 2009
Started pro career in 2000 at age 26, after playing both college and industrial league ball
Isn’t going to overwhelm anyone with an 85-90 mph fastball
Has an excellent screwball, which he induces grounders and misses bats with; should be a plus pitch at the MLB level as well
Also has a two-seam fastball, slider and curve; the two-seamer is a pretty good pitch
No shortage of velocity info on him at our data site (note: screwball shows up as a “sinker” on in our data; two-seam as “shuuto”)
Has never been a huge innings eater in Japan: career high is 186.2 IP (2007), has twice thrown 163 (2002, 2005), next highest total is 144 (2009)
Was not a lefty killer in 2009: lefties hit .300 against him (48/160), while holding righties to .250 (99/396)
Did keep lefties in the park in 2009: only three of his 16 home runs allowed came against lefties
Is represented by Peter Greenberg, who gotanother Takahashi (Ken) a deal with the Blue Jays and later the Mets last year, and recently lost Hideki Okajima. Had he kept Okajima, Greenberg could have really cornered the market on Japanese lefties
Takahashi has said he wants to continue in a starting role after he crosses the Pacific, but putting everything together he seems better suited for the bullpen. That said, assuming his screwball doesn’t get lost in translation, I don’t see why he can’t be an effective reliever in the Okajima mold.
So far the Giants and Rangers have been noted in the Japanese media as interested, though I suspect the Rangers will come up for everyone because of Jim Colborn’s presence. Takahashi himself has said that he would like to wind up on the same team as former Yomiuri teammate Hideki Matsui, but the NL West would likely be the most amenable destination for him.
It looks like we could to see a wave of Japanese major leaguers make their respective ways back to Japan this offseason. I don’t expect all these guys to go back to Japan, but some of them will, and I’ve listed in order of probability of actually returning.
Kenji Johjima – appears to be headed to Hanshin, perhaps as early as the 25th.
Masahide Kobayashi – Hanshin, Orix, Yokohama and Lotte have all be mentioned as suitors for KobaMasa.
Yasuhiko Yabuta – Yabuta’s contract with the Royals quietly expired earlier in the month, and he hasn’t been in the news lately but I’ve seen both Yokohama and Lotte mentioned as interested.
Ken Takahashi – is weighing a return to Japan against taking another shot at MLB. Hiroshima seems to be the obvious destination.
So Taguchi — Orix wants to bring Taguchi back to where he spent the first part of his career.
Tomo Ohka — I think he’d rather stay in 3A than go back to Japan, but there has been speculation that Yokohama would have him back. Ohka started his career by the bay.
Hideki Matsui – For a while during the summer, it looked like both Hanshin and Yomiuri were going to go after Matsui, but his MLB stock has risen and that talk has mostly died down.
Akinori Iwamura – Aki has stated that his first preference is to remain in Tampa Bay, but Hanshin is reportedly interested in bringing him in. Since Yakult posted him they should still own his NPB rights, so I’m not sure if that move is feasible.
And as a special bonus:
Eric Hinske — Hinske wouldn’t be an NPB returnee, but the Hawks are reportedly interested in signing him this year. They had him on their list last offseason as well.
If 46-year old lefthander Kimiyasu Kudoh looks to MLB, will there be any takers?
In recent years we have seen veteran pitchers from Japan sign minor league deals and then contribute to the big league team. 39 year-old Masumi Kuwata made his major league debut with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2007, and 40 year-old Ken Takahashi enjoyed his first season in the majors with the New York Mets this year.
Although neither pitcher left eye-popping numbers with their teams, they both brought intangibles to the table with experience and character. Needless to say, the Japanese media were all over stories, which in turn fueled stories in the US media (see Kuwata attracts crowd and The Mets’ 40-Year-Old Rookie).
Kudoh was released from the Yokohama Baystars and will be looking for a suitor this off-season. He stated his desire to continue playing and in a recent interview mentioned that NPB is his first option. However if negotiations stall and an offer from overseas arrives would he decline? It will be interesting how the situation plays out and if any MLB teams will look to follow the trend of signing Japanese veterans as roster depth.
To give you a sense of what Kudoh brings, check out pitching clip from September 16 versus Yakult, and this velocity chart from the same game..
Among a number of other moves, the Mets demoted 40 year-old lefty Ken Takahashi on June 22. Said Takahashi: “I was called in by the manager and GM, and I thought it might be this. In the minors I’ll probably start, and I’ll probably be able to throw a lot”. Takahashi had posted a 3.00 era with 16 strikeouts in 18 innings for the Mets.
As we first learned from commenter Nelson, the Blue Jays have released lefty Ken Takahashi. Baseball sources have confirmed his release from the Jays, and mlb.com also has a blurb about him signing with the Mets.
So it looks like the prediction that I made in the offseason has turned out to be correct.
Scouting Asia has become a full-time operation for a number of MLB teams. Here are a few that I expect to see watching Japan this season.
Note that I haven’t included the most obvious teams here; by now it isn’t a surprise if the Red Sox, Dodgers or Mets are in the mix for a Japanese player. Nor is it meant to be an exhaustive list; there’s always room for surprises.
Texas Rangers: Pacific Rim scout Jim Colborn’s name shows up in the Japanese media fairly frequently. Colborn coached in Japan in the early 90’s and has Kazuo Fukumori and Yukinaga Maeda. He was last seen scouting a couple of pitchers from Hosei University. Texas also had the top dollar offer for Junichi Tazawa but were rebuffed for Boston.
Toronto Blue Jays: The Jays set up a Pacific Rim department last offseason, headed up by former Nippon Ham Fighter Rob Ducey. They also signed lefthanders Ken Takahashi and Shigeki Noguchi to minor league deals over the offseason, though Noguchi failed his physical. The linked report indicates they’ll be looking for more central pieces as the department ramps up.
San Francisco Giants: Not much to go on here, but Asia scout John Cox’s name has shown up in the media a couple of times. I can’t think of a notable Japanese/NPB signing the Giants have made (unless we count Masashi Murakami) so we’ll see if they make one this year.
New York Yankees: Gene Michael made a trip to Japan last year, reportedly to watch Yu Darvish. I expect that they’ll continue to monitor top guys like Darvish and Norichika Aoki as longer-term prospects, but not be hunting for bargains or middling players.
Atlanta Braves: Signed Kenshin Kawakami and Yoshinori Yamarin last season, and also made a strong bid for Tazawa. Atlanta has also signed minor league-level amateurs such as Ryohei Shimabukuro and Kazuhiro Takeoka in the past.
I’ll have a list of guys they might be competing for within a week or so.
The inevitable happened: Kei Igawa has been reassigned to the Yankees’ minor league camp after a surprisingly good spring numbers-wise. His demotion came after a 4-run, 4-walk outing agains the Rays in which he yielded his first and only run of the spring. Igawa finished up with the one earned run in 15 1/3 spring innings. Nikkan Sports quoted him as saying, “it feels like my time to appeal (for a spot on the team) in camp has ended. They’re going to have me start down there and I want my agent to do my best”. That last statement indicates that Igawa’s agent is looking for a team that is willing to trade for Igawa.
Other recent demotions include Ken Kadokura, Katsuhiro Maekawa, Keiichi Yabu, Ken Takahashi and Junichi Tazawa. Takahashi had pulled a muscle earlier in the spring.