Yu Darvish - NPB's Track Record
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Q. Do Japanese pitchers disappoint? Does SSI concede any "lessons learned" from DiceK and Typhoon Irabu?
A. Well, at the outset Dr. D will cheerfully admit that he's not as dead-on certain about these transitions as he (and the Boston Red Sox) were before Matsuzaka arrived.
Still, for one thing, Darvish is bigger than DiceK, throws harder, and has performed much better. Darvish's career ERA is 2.12, compared to DiceK's Japanese ERA about a full run higher.
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Secondly, I'm convinced that Matsuzaka's arm was fatigued when he got here. In Y3 here, he developed serious hip and arm problems.
Bobby Valentine said about Hideki Irabu, that Nolan Ryan had agreed with Valentine that neither had seen anything like Irabu in his prime. I wonder to what extent we see an NPB pitchers' best over here...
Darvish is 25 and, apparently, throwing at his best. DiceK, in his last few years in Japan, did seem to have some burnout showing. But that's hindsight. NPB fans could remark on it more intelligently.
That said, Matsuzaka struck out 568 men in 622 American League innings.
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But, thirdly, some NPB pitchers do run into adjustment problems. They just can't get away with centered 2-0 and 3-1 fastballs -- and by the time they learn how to hit the edges of the strike zone more consistently, they walk guys. Both Kei Igawa and DiceK suffered from high BB rates.
Kazuhiro Sasaki took about two months to make this adjustment, but he made it.
At this point, it's clear that you have to be careful about "gopheritis" adjustment with NPB pitchers who are used to hitters who cannot hurt them as much as AL hitters can hurt them.
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Fourthly, a lot of Cuban pitchers flamed out, but that didn't help MLB teams who whiffed on Aroldis Chapman, now did it?
As one wag put it, the Yankees wouldn't use Igawa as an excuse to pass on Darvish, any more than they'd use A.J. Burnett as an excuse to pass on Felix.
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Q. Have some NPB pitchers excelled?
A. Here is a list of all 37 Japanese pitchers who have come to the States. You can sort them by ERA.
Hideo Nomo arrived here as a star. He was #4 in the Cy Young balloting his first two years.
Hiroki Kuroda has started 114 games with a 6.7 strikeout, 2.1 walk, and 0.8 homer rate -- very similar to Tim Hudson and Andy Pettitte, even in their primes.
DiceK fanned 8.2 men per game even with his arm thrashed, went 18-3, 2.90 before his arm gave out.
Of course there have been tons of lights-out relief pitchers -- Saito, Otsuka, Sasaki, and several others.
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People say that NPB pitchers can only be relievers ... I've got no idea why that would be. Can you imagine saying that National League relievers can pitch in the AL, but NL starters cannot? What sense does that make?
Then you point out Nomo and Kuroda and etc., and they go "HYPED Japanese starters can't pitch well here," though Kuroda's been better than expected.
You start to get into Antony Flew's "Death by 1,000 Qualifications" problem. Ugh. No, sorry, the relievers count.
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To be fair, we were expecting some Leviathans out of NPB -- Irabu, DiceK, maybe Igawa -- and the last few haven't delivered the magic sparkle dust.
That doesn't mean you can get lazy and just hand-wave them all off, though. Cuba had a farrrrrr worse track record, but you still have to identify the Aroldis Chapmans and El Duques, right?