M’s in on Tazawa bidding
If you were hoping the M’s might shore up the rotation by signing Junichi Tazawa, check this out. MLB.com:
Hideaki Okubo, manager of the Nippon Oil team that Tazawa pitches for, said the Braves, Red Sox and Mariners are also involved. Okubo said the Rangers have made the largest offer to Tazawa.
Those crazy M’s. Are they hell-bent on exacerbating the clubhouse split between Japanese players and everyone else? After all their terrible experiences last year, and of everyone they have the best knowledge of what actually occurred, it makes no sense that they’d actively go into a rebuilding year signing — wait, wait, wait. What if the M’s know as much about this as anyone and thought the whole thing was overblown and not worth missing out on a good player over?
Nahhhhh.
Tazawa is supposedly going to sign with the Red Sox, who were the favorites.
Good to see the M’s taking a chance on a low-risk player though.
I guess it really has been seven years since the third best player in the world left the Oryx Blue Wave to play for the M’s. I saw where we offered $3 million for 3 years or something? Isn’t just about any player who can make the jump to MLB worth a lot more than that? Or am I missing something? It was a nice try though, more encouraging signs from the new people.
Why not take a reasonable shot at a quality arm?
At least they aren’t tossing DiceK/Zito money at the guy.
Some of the money I’M seeing in rumors for free agents is scary. I know they are rumors but Furcal for 12 million a year??Heck if this guy can pitch at the Major League level then 6 million is even cheap but why not just give Fields another 500.000 and sign him for 2.5 million????Besides we need to work on the offense.
Betancourt looks like a sure lock for SS at the above type price for free agents!!!!
jjracoon-
I can’t tell if you are being serious or sarcastic. I’m hoping serious but thinking the later….
Furcal would be – when healthy – a huge upgrade at SS over Yuni. According to Fangraphs Furcal is projected at .286/.354/.409 (James) or .281/.351/.406 (Marcel) next season. He also plays league average or better defense for a SS. While he is 32 and likely to start to decline over the next few years, a 3 year deal at $12M per year would be a huge upgrade for the M’s and probably money well spent given the derth of SS prospects. If they could trade for a young shortstop, I’d be all over that, but if they have to go through Free Agency, Furcal’s as good a bet as any.
For comparison, here are Yuni’s projections:
.281/.307/.399 (James)
.283/.311/.408 (Marcel)
So Furcal and Yuni are projected at roughly the same average and slugging with Furcal projected to have about 45 points higher OBP. Furcal’s average projected OPS is .760 while Yuni’s is .713. Add in the better defense and you get a better player for more money. I’d argue that that is money well spent.
Oh… and to stay on topic…
Go Tazawa… Signing young credible starting pitching prospects is always a plus.
I’d much rather use the potential Fields’ money on signing Tawaza and then get back another pick in the 1st round this year to go with the Ibanez comp picks and our #2 overall pick. Give Z all the picks he needs to restock the farm system.
Tazawa would be a great first step as he and Gaby Hernandez would make our two closest to MLB ready starters in the minors (not counting guys like RRS who have already been up) after no having either 6 months ago.
I don’t want Tazawa. Rarely reaches 90 MPH when rested, and struggles to reach 87 or 88 after throwing a couple inning. He lacks stamina, and velocity, and at 22 he is not going to add any more velocity.
Jordan,
And where did you get this information? Sounds like word for word the same thing I read on another website. ESPN?
Weak.
So is this Z’s player or the ownership’s?
jordan’s post is an almost direct quote of Jim Allen’s ESPN column from yesterday “Kawakami Heads Questionable Free Agent Class”.
..”He has good command of his fastball and slurve, but he lacks velocity, stamina and the ability to keep the ball down.”
and:
“At 22, Tazawa is unlikely to throw much harder than he does now; his fastball barely tops 90 mph when he is rested, and he struggled to hit 88 mph at the end of last season. ”
finally:
“The Mets scout believes the pitcher’s body is too stiff to allow him to keep the ball down in the zone and Tazawa lacks the smarts and toughness to hang in and learn the lessons needed to apply his talent in the majors.”
Ignoring the “smarts and toughness” elements, it’s still not a very flattering picture.
sounds like they’ve been following him for a while; IIRC, he became officially “available” about the time of the GM interviews
From everything I’ve read, the BoSox are days from signing him, and he doesn’t sound all that great anyway…
He’s a pitching prospect, not a major league pitcher.
Any chance to add a decent arm like his to one’s minor league system should be met with glee. It’s not like we have anything better to do with the money.
Ah, so he’s a prospect. I was missing something. OK, then that raises this question: The Japanese seem to take a much aggressive development route with their pitchers, one that many in the U.S. would regard as almost reckless. He’s 22 but does seem to be about AAA. So would switching to a four days rest, age times 10 pitch count approach be a good thing for him or a bad thing?
Yes, I did get that from ESPN. Where else would I get my info other than the internet? Its not like I went to Japan and scouted him. I was just saying that so your M’s fans can hear if you didn’t see it. Good lord.
it was a nice thought — remember the comment guideline: “Small snippets is cool with link or proper attribution.”
Mike Plugh in SI has a piece on how the way Tazawa has been courted and perhaps signed goes against practice
Right. So either link it or put it in blockquotes. Otherwise, heh, plagarism!
Should I have said ESPN said…. maybe, but I forgot. I don’t know how to make a fancy box, and it is worded in my own words as I typed that a couple hours after I read it. It is not in ESPN’s words, so, heh, no plagerism.
Well, I’d maybe start by trying the conveniently placed buttons right above the comment text box.
Look, a couple guys are trying to help you understand the guidelines. I wouldn’t get too worked up about it. Also, we’re never snarky, nor do we ever use sarcasm. Welcome to USSMariner!
From everything I’ve read, the BoSox are days from signing him, and he doesn’t sound all that great anyway…
From everything I’ve read, the BoSox are days from signing every single free agent on the planet… well, except for the ones the Yankees sign, and according to what I’ve read they’re days away from signing every single one also.
In other words, everything I’ve read that is speculative — which at this point is almost everything — is pretty much worthless.
But in other overseas scouting news, have the Pirates discovered an entirely new, billion-armed source of fresh talent? (Hey, it’s the Pirates. What do they have to lose?)
Well, the Indian cricket team is insanely good, and while the pitching delivery is different, it still represents precision muscle memory and torque generation from a throwing motion. Why not give it a shot? Couldn’t be worse than Silva right?
From what I have read up on the two Indian pitchers, they struggle to repeat their deliveries. Struggle with command, and can only touch 90. One consistently throws 84 and the other about 80. They had also never touched a baseball before this.
I can go to about 70% of high schools and find a kid that throws that hard or harder, and has a clue about what he is doing, and has done it before, worked harder, and can throw more consistently.
Well, the Indian cricket team is insanely good, and while the pitching delivery is different, it still represents precision muscle memory and torque generation from a throwing motion.
A completely different throwing motion which is more like a tennis serve than pitching. Ever try to bowl?
I have. It was hugely painful.
Now I am confused. This article from ESPN less than a month ago says that Tazawa has a 97mph fastball…
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3672409
The most fundamental rule of (cricket) bowling is that your arm must be straight or at least very nearly straight. Someone who does bend their arm is referred to as a ‘chucker’ and can be suspended.
I would think a squash players action would be more akin to pitching than cricket. Perhaps the Ms could give Peter Nicol an NRI?
I seem to remember Ian Botham and Alan Lamb training with the Royals in the early-mid 80’s on the very British premise that as they could hit a cricket ball quite far – they must be good at baseball too as it’s just what the Americans call rounders!
Actually, a tennis serve is very very similar to pitching. The footwork and release of torque is aimed differently, but the arm is almost identical. Bowling IS painful.
Anyway, I was merely musing that there could be potential for pitchers from India, not necessarily these two gentlemen. You would clearly want to start them out earlier.
That said, I the Red Sox DID try to sign Adam Gilchrist.
I’m living in Japan right now and the things I’ve heard about him were saying he has a mid 90s fastball. I think. Maybe I made a math error when going from kmh to mph. But anyway it seems like Tazawa is a good pitching prospect, but it’s important to remember he is just a prospect. I have two worries about the Mariners going after him.
They have to be careful not to overpay. With a bidding war going on it might be easy to end up paying number one draft choice kind of money for him or even more, and I don’t think he’s a number one draft choice in potential. He hasn’t been pitching for a major team against top competition, and at 22, I think I would expect an elite prospect to be more dominant against that level than he has been.
Also, the Japanese baseball league is pissed about Tazawa skipping the draft and going to MLB. I would worry that it would make it harder to acquire Japanese players in the future. Japanese teams are much less independant than American teams and if the Japanese league sends out a memo that a certain team can’t get any more players for awhile, it could happen. And I’m not sure that’s worth risking over a upper-mid level prospect like Tazawa, especially when there’s a chance a real deal like Yu Darvish could come available in the next couple of years.
And where did you get this information? Sounds like word for word the same thing I read on another website. ESPN?
Lighten up. Baserball writers are notorious for not citing their sources.
I don’t want Tazawa. Rarely reaches 90 MPH when rested, and struggles to reach 87 or 88 after throwing a couple inning. He lacks stamina, and velocity, and at 22 he is not going to add any more velocity.
Hmm! Sounds like the second coming of Hideki Irabu
If that happens to be true, I hope he signs with the Rangers. Comedic potential galore! [Best case scenario, I’d be interested to see him pitch for us. It seems worth a shot.]
I saw Tazawa pitch in two games back in September, but I’m not a scout. Either way, he’s coming out of the industrial leagues in Japan — not the pros — definitely a prospect, not a majors-ready guy. He’d be an NPB-ready guy should he have entered the draft in Japan, but he didn’t.
I don’t remember him getting above the equivalent of 90 mph, either. HOWEVER, in the first game I saw him in, against a somewhat weak JR Shikoku team, he was perfect through 5 innings and ultimately ended up striking out 12 guys in 8 innings. (I blogged the game here.)
The second game I saw him in, I was there mostly to watch the marching bands and boo a player on Honda Sayama’s team, so again… not a scout.
Either way, it’s really unlikely he’d go to the M’s. Thanks to Golden Boy, the Red Sox is where it’s at these days.
And for the record, Darvish supposedly claims he has no interest in MLB… and as a diehard Fighters fan I must admit I hope it’s true.
I’ve heard Darvish say he’s not interested in the MLB too, although I think he added “right now” if my memory serves me correctly (which is always questionable). But athletes at his level almost always want to play against the best, and I have to wonder, even if he really doesn’t have any desire to leave Japan, how long he can continue to absolutely dominate the NPB without getting bored by it and wanting to try the next level.