NPB Players Coming to MLB

[CaliforniaRaisin]

Kodai Senga is expected to come over this offseason and won’t need to be posted:

 

 

The amazing Roki Sasaki & Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the two best NPB pitchers, will take a little longer to get to MLB:

 

 

As for the latest crop, we can make a good guess about Sasaki: Like Ohtani, he’ll move when he feels it’s in his best interest since there is zero chance he signed with Lotte without a secret posting guarantee.

 

Last winter, Yamamoto told the media he had requested the Buffaloes post him. Such announcements have often been followed by the team acceding to that request the following winter—except in the case of the SoftBank Hawks, who have never done so.

 

On the other hand, Yamamoto won’t be 25, old enough for the big payday allowable to an international free agent according to MLB’s CBA, until after the 2023 season, so if Orix does give him the green light, that would likely be the time.

 

Eric Longenhagen at Fangraphs has Sasaki and Yamamoto as 55 FV and Senga at 50. Here is his report on Senga:

 

Senga has incredible arm strength and exploding fastball movement. He also throws enough strikes to start and has four pitches, but neither breaking ball (a low-90s cutter and a low-80s slider) has bat-missing action. His splitter does, though, and the fallback option for Senga is high-leverage relief in which he leans on his fastball and splitter. But Senga's ability to sustain big velo under a starter's workload will probably convince some teams that he can start in the big leagues, and those are the ones likely to offer him the most money. Hours before this list was first published, Senga signed a five-year extension with the NPB Hawks, a deal that includes an opt out after the 2022 season. He's a potential 2023 debut.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

A couple weeks ago David Laurila's notes column asked a former NPB pitcher now in MLB about the top pitchers: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/sunday-notes-torontos-hunter-mense-played-pro-ball-with-a-teenage-giancarlo-stanton/

 

Who are the best pitchers in Japan? I recently asked that question to St. Louis Cardinals right-hander Drew VerHagen, who returned to MLB this year after spending the 2020 and 2021 season with the Nippon Ham Fighters.

 

“There would be three, really,” responded VerHagen, adding that he was in NPB’s Pacific League and thus less informed on Central League hurlers. “Roki Sasaki, pure stuff-wise, was maybe the most impressive. [Koudai] Senga and [Yoshi] Yamamoto are the other two.”

 

Sasaki is the best-known of the three, having become an international sensation in baseball circles at the tender age of 20. VerHagen’s perspectives on the other two were hence more interesting to hear.

 

Yamamoto — a 23-year-old right-hander with the Orix Buffaloes — has a 1.81 ERA and 128 strikeouts in 124 innings this season. He was even better last year, logging a 1.39 ERA with 206 strikeouts in 193-and-two-thirds innings.

 

“He’s got good velo — 94 to 98 — with a nice curveball and a little slider,” VerHagen said of Yamamoto. “He’s filling up the zone. It’s hard to compare Japanese pitchers [to MLB pitchers], because they’re so different, but he’s maybe a [Walker] Buehler-type? Buehler is really nasty, so maybe that’s not a great comp, but [Yamamoto] definitely has good stuff.”

 

Senga is reportedly a strong candidate to come stateside next year. VerHagen was somewhat less-bullish on the 29-year-old Fukuoka Softbank Hawks right-hander.

 

“I see Senga more as a reliever [in MLB],” opined VerHagen, who had a 3.51 ERA over his two NPB seasons. “We’ll see. He’ll probably get a decent opportunity to start, but I’ve never seen him go deep into games on a regular basis, where he’s mixing three, four pitches. It’s more like a lot of heaters and maybe one offspeed.”

 

Senga has a 1.70 ERA and 105 strikeouts in 101-and-a-third innings this season. Last year he had a 2.66 ERA and 90 strikeouts in 84-and-two-thirds innings.

[Bertz]

I think this offseason would be a poor time to invest in a big ticket NPB player. There's so much uncertainty on the roster as is, I don't think you can responsibly use one of your big ticket offseason acquisitions on a guy you can't totally trust. Especially when it's fundamentally "is this guy an everyday player" trust as opposed to "is this guy a star or merely good" trust with like a Correa/Rodon/Swanson type of acquisition.

 

There are times to embrace variance, last offseason was a great one, but this offseason is IMO an awful one.