Add new comment

That Safeco beat Beltre and Sexson, as far as Sexson goes, he was out of baseball months after leaving Seattle, and Beltre, while his home run power did slip away in '09, he also spent most of the year with bone spurs in his shoulder.
Also, the more I look at Kazuo Matsui, the less inclined I am to see him as a pure bust.  In terms of what the Mets actually got for their money, absolutely, but in terms of his ability to play American baseball, I think there are caveats.  I notice looking at his stats, that Kaz only played 100 games in a season 3 times in his 6 (7 if you count this year) American seasons.  Looking at his injury record, yep, a back strain finished his first American season, and injuries to each knee hampered his next 2 seasons.  When he was finally somewhere near healthy, he put up good seasons for (post-humidore) Colorado and Houston.  Had he actually managed to play a decent shortstop, he actually would have ended up being a decently valuable player.  The fact that Matsui was a speed player that had multiple injuries to his ankles, knees, and back is what kept him from being a minor star.  The point here is, if Nakajima is the exact same hitter as Matsui, that's not necessarily a bad thing if he can stay healthy.
Moving back toward the subject at hand, I think Nakajima would probably be a good fit for Safeco, in that he seems to be more of a line drive hitter as opposed to attempting to loft the ball.  At least that's how he's often referred to, and the fact that he's hit into double digit double plays and his lack of extrabase hits compared to Matsui also point in that direction (there are other factors as well, Seibu's game has moved away from the way it was when Matsui was there, where he sac bunted 87 times in his career, Nakajima has done so only 7.  Matsui is also probably Ichiro fast as his sterling 83% MLB steal success rate can attest whereas Nakajima looks to be only above average.)
I actually like the idea of acquiring Nakajima a little more now than when I brought it up the other day.  Another thought that hasn't been brought up yet is the fact that on the Mariners, Nakajima would be playing with THE Ichiro.  This is a many sided opportunity, certainly there's likely to be a morale boost for Nakajima (similar to the one which Ichiro experienced playing with Ken Griffey Jr. last season).  There's also the smooth landing of playing on a team where you can get the opinion's of one of the games best hitters without the filter of a translator. That might be one of the reasons for Johjima's relatively smooth offensive transition into the majors.