Rangers Buy a Ferrari M’s Get Yugo
February 26th, 2012 by terrybenishHishashi Iwakuna has never thrown a pitch in major league baseball. What pitches he did throw last year exhibited that he was hurt. Took time off, came back and threw fastballs in the 83 mph range.
Rangers signed Yu Darvish, 96-97 mph fastball, a veritable Ferrari.
The Mariners sign Iwakuna, a Yugo.
Larry Stone says he’s a lock in the three spot in the rotation. It was Doug Fister last year, the guy who pitched great in the American League playoffs for the Tigers.
Wonderful news from Arizona.
February 26th, 2012 at 10:56 am
So the M’s are counting in Iwakuna to be the next coming of Jamie Moyer?
February 27th, 2012 at 8:27 am
In his career in Japan, he has been a full meal deal. Reasonably good fastball 90-91, with his special pitch, which
is like a splitter, forkballish type of pitch, similar to Kazuhiro Sasaski’s pitch that Dave Niehaus called the Thang.
But he came out in the first part of last year at 86 or so, took six weeks off in middle of the year due to shoulder pain and fatigue, then came back at 84-85. So my “sources” tell me he’s been anything but firm in Peoria so far. Time will tell. If he’s got an actual rotater cuff issue or labrum injury, rest does not heal it.
There are good, even great players in Japanese baseball, but it has not shown to be uniformly easy for players to transition. From a daily player perspective the two best have been Hidecki Matsui and Ichiro. With no disrespect intended to Ichiro, Matsui has been a monster player, seven years with the Yankees an OPS of .852 and a couple of lesser years but still workable with Angels and A’s. Ichiro’s career OPS in comparison has been .791. There have been a few other average to good productive players, but not an avalanche.
With pitchers it is more dicey, no pun intended to Dice-K, starting pitchers throw once a week in Japan and every five days here. A number of pitchers have been successful as relievers, but for starters it has proved difficult to sustain after the transition.
I suspect that it is not because Iwakuna was not a good talent, but should a pitcher here drop from 91 to 83, injury would be the suspicion. Moyer was immensely competitive at that speed, but he could throw to the head of a pen with three pitches. Warren Sphan, Tommy John are others. Greg Maddux threw harder but had command and huge movement…Although speed kills and is easy to recognize, success without speed is possible. it is just very hard to walk through that door as most teams will not believe it possible.