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Matty sez,
....are you buying that Kawasaki might be a little bit of a hitter? That seems to be a new source of buzz...I am deeply skeptical due to his lack of demonstrated contact skill in Japan, but would welcome feedback.
To which Bat571 aptly replies:
Kawasaki wasn't a bad hitter in the JPL (avg .295 w/ .721 OPS), but with the tennis/placement swing like Ichiro without any of Ichiro's occasional power (14 HR in 5 years in smaller parks), most felt that MLB pitchers would just knock the bat out of his hands.
Well, it looks like his wrists are pretty strong, and though he's not hitting it far, he is placing it well. I wouldn't start him, but Ryan looks like he's going to be iffy, and if the alternative is Figgins in the lineup, I'm starting to like the idea of Kawasaki as our SS/UT guy with Seager available with a bigger bat when needed.
To answer Matty's question, I'm buying that he might be a little bit of a hitter yes. By "a little bit of a hitter" I mean that he might outhit Derek Jeter, Elvis Andrus, and/or Jimmy Rollins this year.
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=== My Bad, Dept. ===
The first thing that SSI guessed about Kawasaki is that we feared he might get embarrassed here. The basis was superficial: if the great NPB hitters had been merely okay, what would a mediocre NPB hitter do here? Also: Kawasaki is one of the few guys who has showed up without NPB power: would a hard inside pitch knock the bat out of his hands?
The second thing that SSI said was that it's all just guesswork. There have been about 10 players to translate. Would you put any confidence in Major League Equivalencies if only 10 PCL hitters had ever come to the bigs? Hint: No.
SABRMatt is an accomplished mathemetician. He can relate to the fact that an MLE formula, based on 10 players only, could be worse than useless. Such a formula could be deceptive and distracting.
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=== What's Changed? ===
Two weeks on, Kawasaki has shown that his ISO is low not because he is physically weak, but because he emphasizes a slap-and-run game. He stays within himself. It's like a golfer choosing to use a 3-iron off the tee, as opposed to a golfer not being able to hit 180 yards with his driver.
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Well, if the goal were to evaluate unknown hitters and to select the most productive one going forward, that's what you might do: hold a tryout and cut down, like in jayvee basketball.
Even so, it's tough to use ML spring training as tryout. You're talking about 30-40 at-bats this March, as opposed to Figgins' 5,000 pro PA's and 3,000 minors PA's. Most of these players have at least 2,000 pro at-bats, and now we're going to use 30 to decide who they are as hitters?
The offseason goal that Zduriencik selected was to infuse +2.0 to +3.0 WAR into the roster by creating a comfort zone for Figgins. That's player development, as opposed to player evaluation.
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True, a cold-blooded, baseball-only decision might have been to try to infuse those same WAR by flushing Figgins, and getting 2-3 WAR out of Seager or Liddi. The M's decision, however, captured the goal of rescuing some of their $18M investment.