Yusei Kikuchi To Meet With Seven MLB Teams

This kid is really dragging this thing out. Looks like he's after every dollar he can get. I'm assuming that Japan creates a rule so that every time a nice high school player comes out (i.e. Junichi Tazawa or Yusei Kikuchi) he doesn't hold the Japanese leagues hostage. Or perhaps on the other side of the coin, if the Asian League would not throw them in prison for nine and a half seasons before they are a free agent, they may get more of their top athletes wanting to sign up without meeting with every team on the planet possible.

Slightly unfair to say they haven't fared well. Junichi Tazawa did pretty well this year for the Red Sox, considering he jumped from the Industrial League in Japan to the toughest division in baseball, at the age of 23. Not too shabby if you ask me.

Outside of pitching a decent game against NY Tazawa pretty much stunk .7.46 ERA then he got hurt.

> "Outside of pitching a decent game against NY Tazawa pretty much stunk .7.46 ERA then he got hurt."

Yes but consider his circumstances. He wasnt supposed to pitch in the majors, but found himself thrown into a pennant race at 23 in new country. His numbers suffered from being thrown into games as mopup. He showed a lot of promise.

Now im not saying hes going to be a superstar. Far from it. But hes shown that with some more seasoning, he could be a solid #5 guy.

And he didnt acually get hurt. He reached his innings limit so they did the standard 60 day DL thing so they they could create a space.

In other words, as long as these young japanese players dont demand a kings ransom, they're worth a go for a couple of million, especially to the bigger market teams.

I agree that a kid from Japan right out of high school IS way too risky..as far as Tazawa goes, although he did get roughed up a couple times while in MLB, he showed incredible poise for such a young kid in such a tough situation..I mean come on, extra innings against the yankees and Arod..he'll be just fine..

Chan Ho Park is Korean!

But nice stats to back up your argument, no doubt Asian athletes can succeed over here

Only Japanese pitcher I'd be excited about would be Darvish.

no for giants were ok without him and he will want a but load of dough

I'd say Japanese players as a whole have done quite well coming to the bigs. Which is too be expected since only the best even attempt to come here.

Here is a link to how they fared up to the '07 season.

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/graphics/03_30_07_japanese_players/

Well see, that graph backs up what I was talking about

3 or fewer played

Masanori Murakami
Takashi Kashiwada
Satoru Komiyama
Takahito Nomura
Michael Nakamura
Shingo Takatsu
Kazuhito Tadano
Keiichi Yabu
Kei Igawa
Kazuhiro Sasaki (well, 3.5)
Akinori Otsuka (lasted 3.5)
*Masumi Kuwata (played part of one season)
*Masahide Kobayashi (1 and a tiny bit played)

+ 3 played, 3 or fewer relevant

Mac Suzuki
Hideki Irabu
Masato Yoshii
Masao Kida
Kazuhisa Ishii
Tomokazu Ohka

Bucking that trend

Hideo Nomo (on and off relevance for 11 years)
Shigetoshi Hasegawa (solid 9 years of mid relief)
Takashi Saito (guess 4 relevant)

Unknowns as of yet

Hideki Okajama (so far 3 relevant, but trending down each season)
Daisuke Matsuzka (so far 2 relevant)
*Hiroki Kuroda (2 seasons so far)
*Ken Takahashi (27 innings)
*Kanshin Kawakami (1 season so far)
*Junichi Tazawa (25 innings)
*Koji Uehara (about 1/3 season)
*YasuhikoYabuta (parts of two seasons, neither relevant)

(*not listed on graph)

of those 30 pitchers, only 3 are really relevant over a total of 4 (or more) seasons, so far. And really, Nomo is the only name really worth remembering 15 years from now (again, so far.) There are possibilities for the future, but based on past track record…