Don’t forget about Junichi Tazawa!
Although I suspect you already have.
It is really easy to dismiss or ignore players after they fail to match their hype or fall victim to injury. It happens every year and it’s happening now.
Tazawa is a little guy and he has great secondary stuff and he is quietly under the radar. He is not overpowering or intimidating, but at Double-A Portland, Tazawa displayed that he can get young American hitters out and do it consistently.
I often fall into the mindset that Japanese pitchers won’t cut it in the big leagues. For every Hideo Nomo there are three or four Tomo Ohka’s who get rocked in America –despite the full-blown hype machine. People easily fall in love with the idea of mystery and the unexplained, but this isn’t an episode of ABC’s LOST. The Major Leagues are not filled with free-swinging, Ichiro-wannabes like the ones who play in Japan. So when I see Kei Igawa get bombed in the AL East, I am not surprised and it only reinforces my opinion.
It’s probably not fair to jump to such irrational conclusions, but I’m sure you have your own snapshot-judgments and opinions that you carry around about baseball everyday.
Maybe it’s your old-man disgust for sabermetrics or perhaps it’s your distrust of Jed Lowrie because you haven’t paid close enough attention to him. Either way, they are both emotional and baseless — but you believe them anyway. It is a mindset and behavior that is applied at-will and without reason.
It’s the same reason I start “Yankees Suck” chants on the Green Line and it’s the same reason I doubt the Japanese hype machine.
Take Daisuke Matsuzaka for example. He is a pitcher that a lot of Red Sox fans are split on. Some fans adore him for his wizard-like ways and for how he shows glimpses of complete dominance. On the other hand are fans (me included) that become incredibly frustrated with his obsession of not throwing strikes. How many pitches can I throw in five innings? I wonder if I can walk the bases full and then pitch out of it!?
Having Matsuzaka might annoy some fans, but he does provide an excellent conduit for Red Sox baseball operations into the Japanese player pipeline. Japanese pitchers view Dice-K as an idol and jump at the idea of playing with him. Tazawa asked his home country’s professional teams to not draft him in order to allow him to pitch in the United States directly from the Japanese amateurs.
This request from Tazawa raised a lot of eyebrows but ultimately was met and only fueled the hype machine. Surely many more are en-route.
Tazawa represents a puzzle piece in the bullpen that is being overlooked by a lot of media members and fans. For all the speculation about the Sox gobbling up a top-flight reliever this off season, there may be a real solution already imported from Yokohama.
Think back to when they first signed this kid. What was your thought?
“Oh man, this kid better not walk everyone.”
“This kid is legit. I think he’s going to be awesome. Did you see him strike out ____?”
“….his park-adjusted, fielding-independent, vector-rating is superficial, but he does show a distinct ability to create negative run-distribution in high-leverage data points.”
Whatever your thoughts were then –go back to them and daydream a little. Tazawa could be a dominant 7th inning guy based on his history. Isn’t that the whole point here? Find it and develop it yourself? Who is better at doing that than the Red Sox? Their Top-10 prospects are all their own as none were acquired from some other organization. Boston feeds their farm and simultaneously competes at a high-level for championships. You cannot fake this much depth and skill, so why shouldn’t we trust that Tazawa has a real shot?
He hit the disabled list in late 2009 and then had Tommy John surgery in March of 2010. By all accounts now, he will be ready to go for Opening Day 2011.
Eight strikeouts per nine innings are what JOO-KNEE-SHEE put up in 19 starts at Double-A Portland. Tazawa baffled hitters (as he did in Japan) with a full repertoire of curve balls, sliders and a splitter to match with his low-90’s fastball. His approach is mature for a 23-year old and his delivery dazzles the eye with an unorthodox delivery and a sharp, whip-like release. He looked simply awesome at first.
The problem is that beyond Double-A, Tazawa has not displayed any of the traits that made him one of Japan’s rising stars.
In Boston, Tazawa threw 25 innings and we didn’t see the control or the dominance that he flashed up in Maine. In fact, by the time he found his way to Rhode Island and eventually Massachusetts, we saw a kid who was over matched and it probably soured all of our thoughts on him.
Pay no mind if you must. He’s really JAG (just another guy — as Chris Gaspar would say) and it probably is better off that way. He can settle in a little better without the piqued-curiosity of a highly-expectant fan base. Sure, Japan has lofty standards but nothing matches the spotlight of Fenway Park or the elite quality of hitters in America.
Japanese players have an inherent pressure that no other country deals with when its ball players embark on the USA. It’s not really a surprise that the adjustment is very difficult. It took until 1995 for the second Japanese-born player (Hideo Nomo) to even play in the Majors. From 1964 until 1995, Masanori Murakami was the only Japanese player who had played in Major League Baseball.
Tazawa and Matsuzaka have to deal with a lot.
Japanese pressure is a cultural phenomenon that Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Canada and Cuba do not face. When you leave Japan baseball for America – it’s all eyes on you.
At this point, it’s probably most-appropriate that we all ignore Tazawa. Write him off as fodder and scoff at the idea of him being impact if his name is brought up by your peers.
At this point he is just another failed product of the Japanese hype-machine and a shadow of YouTube videos that presented footage of his remarkable mastery of overmatched Japanese hitters.
In America – it’s been all sizzle and no steak.
American footage has Tazawa getting beaten up by professionals in the Majors, marking a stark contrast to the impressions given by his performances shown on the web. In Matsuzaka’s case, you can add in reels of bases-loaded jams, full counts and a hundred baseballs splattered across the Amica Pitch Zone by the fifth inning.
Sure, he pitched in and won a World Series — but really — is anyone truly happy with what they’ve gotten out of Dice-K so far?
It’s very possible that the team always assumed that Matsuzaka would be nothing more than a 4th or 5th starter and everything’s OK there.
But perhaps it’s time the front office looks at how Japanese pitchers project in the Majors and decide if they want to keep pumping money into lottery tickets and posting fees that don’t pay off. Through four seasons, Matsuzaka has returned $43 million worth of production on his $52 million dollar contract.
Throw in the $50 million dollar posting fee and it’s doubtful the team even gets two-thirds back on its investment. (Cue posting fee argument)
Maybe it sounds like I have an axe to grind with Dice-K, but the important thing to remember here is that there is a super-prospect with ‘plus-plus’ secondary stuff who has the faith of Theo Epstein. He is waiting in the wings with a repaired ulnar collateral ligament and a post-hype status just waiting for another chance.
The Red Sox bullpen has a lot of question marks this offseason and it might be that Tazawa answers one of them.
Even if no one thinks he will.
————————————————————-