Mariners left-hander Yusei Kikuchi has told the team that he is declining his $13MM player option for the 2022 season, according to The Athletic’s Corey Brock (Twitter link). The southpaw will now enter the free agent market after three seasons in Seattle.
As per the unusual structure of Kikuchi’s contract, the Mariners had until Friday to decide whether or not to exercise four years’ worth of $16.5MM club options for the lefty covering the 2022-25 seasons — effectively, a four-year/$66MM extension. If the Mariners declined to pick up those options, Kikuchi could then opt into the 2022 season via his $13MM player option.
Today’s news indicates that the M’s have indeed passed on those four option years, which isn’t a shock considering the inconsistent nature of Kikuchi’s 2021 season. However, earlier reports suggested that Kikuchi would exercise his player option, making his decision to hit the open market something of a surprise.
2021 was the best of Kikuchi’s three MLB campaigns, as he posted a 4.41 ERA, 48.4% grounder rate, and an above-average 24.5% strikeout rate over 157 innings for Seattle. The underlying Statcast metrics weren’t nearly as solid, as Kikuchi’s hard contact numbers were among the worst of any pitcher in the league, and this issue eventually caught up to Kikuchi as the season went on. After posting a 3.48 ERA over 98 1/3 IP in the first half and earning a spot on the AL All-Star team, Kikuchi’s ERA blew up to 5.98 over 58 2/3 frames in the second half.
While not the best platform season for a free agent, Kikuchi and his representatives at The Boras Corporation must think that the 30-year-old can land a solid multi-year deal on the open market. It isn’t a far-out argument, considering that teams are always in need of starting pitching. All it takes is one suitor to see some untapped potential in Kikuchi, or perhaps he could be seen as a change-of-scenery candidate. The left-hander has a 4.97 ERA over his 365 2/3 innings in Major League Baseball, yet with some flashes of better performance (i.e. the first half of 2021, and how Kikuchi’s peripherals in 2020 generally outperformed his real-world numbers).
Other factors could also be at play, beyond just Kikuchi’s desire to land a larger contract. Speculatively, a return to Japan might not be out of the question, if Kikuchi wished to once again pitch in Nippon Professional Baseball. Kikuchi was one of NPB’s top pitchers before making the jump to North America, and he would likely find no shortage of interest from the Seibu Lions (his old team) or another Japanese team if he returned to his home country.
From the Mariners’ perspective, they now have a hole in the rotation to fill, though Kikuchi projected as a third starter at best considering how his 2021 season ended. The M’s were already expected to be targeting starting pitching this winter, and they now have an extra $13MM to work with in their offseason pursuits. Seattle has less than $57MM committed to their 2022 payroll, and GM Jerry Dipoto has said that ownership has okayed the front office to increase spending following the team’s 90-win season.
wait… what? does he rly think he’s gonna get more on the market? Seattle fans must be jumping for joy.
I’m beyond happy. Freed up more cap for hopefully a busy free agent period for us
Just a guess on my part but dies he want to return home?
No word on that yet…..
This is a little surprising. I guess he’s going for more guaranteed money. He will probably get more than $13 million total on the free agent market but obviously on a lower AAV. I could see a 2-year $20 million contract. For him a $13 million pillow contract would have been good if he had any faith in himself. He was horrid at the end of the season. This tells me that he doesn’t think he is going to pitch well enough next season to get $13 million again. Otherwise he would have bet on himself. Now he just wants as much total money as possible so if he falls apart they still have to pay him on a multi-year deal. Buyer beware. It could be possible that he just wants to go back to Japan though like Tanaka did. If this guy opts out of his contract then JD Martinez definitely does. Everyone knows JD is worth way more than Kikuchi and Martinez can likely knock out any potential future QO at the same time by opting out.
Not gonna lie, I’m happy to hear this. He really did not deserve to be in the rotation next season. Good for him. Maybe he can latch on somewhere else and build up his value to a better contract.
When he’s on, he’s a CY Young candidate, but I only ever saw glimpses of that.
“Yusei Kikuchi, I say P-p****!!”
If he had exercised the option, he would have been relegated to a relief role. He wasn’t going to potentially rebuild his value (insert joke how he never had any) from the bullpen.
Perhaps now he can get an incentive-laden 1-year deal as a starter with a decent 2023 option, or simply position himself for a potentially better payday in free agency after the 2022 season.
He’s betting on himself.
While there is a good bet that he is very well thinking he has better value potential as a Starter, I also wouldn’t be surprised if he actually doesn’t..
Throughout his career, he’s always had a notable platoon split (not massive), and better in high-leverage situations (in every metric!). Throughout his career, he even gets *better* the more he goes through a lineup (because the latter innings are the high leverage innings)
Were I a gambler, I’d take the odds of a Kikuchi career revival happening as a short reliever over a starter.
That said, it is also more likely that he thinks (ego) more along the lines you posit.
He probably wants to be a back end starter on a better team.
It would have been a better team if he wasn’t on it in the 2nd half.
It’s an interesting situation.
There is a strong history of Japanese-born Mariners doing somewhat similar things. Kazu Sasaki and Kenji Johjima both opted out of their contracts a year early when it was clear they were no longer welcome. Ichiro (had to) ask to be traded (only) after he had been run out as an everyday player for too long. In each of these cases, the player had to proactively pursue a downgrade because the FO of the time wouldn’t do it (in traditional US baseball “style”). Those no longer capable of contributing to an MLB team returned to the NPB. Sasaki returned to his old team for 2 seasons and Johjima went to a new team for 3. Ichiro explicitly asked to go to a team he would be a bench player for and admitted preference to the Yankees (and “coincidentally”, his first Yankees game was while they were the Away team in Seattle).
They’ve always come off as measures to save face — both for the (then much more Japanese-connected) upper management and the players. Overdue roster moves by management can be gently swept under the rug. The players are allowed to continue their careers with at least some fanfare until retiring.
This situation with Kikuchi is different, however. While he is sort of bowing out of his contract, it is — not yet at least — known that he’s doing so to return to Japan. He could still be a useful player in the US and could even be a useful player for the Mariners. He’s just… not been that for any extended period of time. Were he an American, it would send off flags that he still thinks he can cash in on his potential.
As a result, we now have the question of whether he intends to be more like the Japanese-born Mariners player or typical MLB player in his position.
I said on MLB Trade Rumors months ago that the guy is finished.
Empty tank in my considered opinion. But good luck, Yusei, you played your string out as long as you could.
You were good.
Well, 86 ERA+ good…
Kikuchi had a solid 3.85 xFIP and 4.16 SIERA. But I don’t see him getting more than what he could have gotten if he excercised his option rather than turned it down. I don’t think you could fully rule out a return to Japan either.
xFIP normalizes HR rate so it’s probably not the best stat for Kikuchi considering he’s established that he lets up homers at an above average rate. When he gets hit he gets hit hard. Go check his statcast page, it’s literally full of blue because of how bad his batted ball profile is.
Yeah, bottom 1% in exit velo, bottom 3% in hard hit rate. He does get his fair share of ground balls and looked solid in the first half.
Yeah it’s brutal. He just let’s up so much hard contact. I think he should transition to a multi inning relief role, he clearly doesn’t have the stamina to last long into games or especially long into a season. The Mariners even gave him extra rest and he still collapsed in the second half.
Yes, mlb125, he sure did get those ground-ball outs, He would set hitters up with his cutter or splitter, I forget which, and then get them with the change.
But somewhere about the All Star break, he suddenly couldn’t command the changeup, and he has never gotten back that “feel” he once had for the change, and he couldn’t fool hitters anymore.
Something like that, what he called his “feel for the change”, must be mostly mental.
But that’s how it works in baseball, especially for finesse pitchers like Kikuchi.
Like Yogi said, “Half of baseball is 90 percent mental.”
Our Jamie Moyer was a similar kind of pitcher, but he somehow never lost his magic until right near the end of his long career. Kikuchi just wasn’t able to continue that long.
Was crap after MLB started checking pitchers for the sticky stuff
Moyer was the man. Was robbed of one Cy Young and then his other Cy Young caliber season was during one of Pedros ridiculous seasons. I played against his kid for about 10 years and with his kid for 2 years in Little League and Jamie was always super nice.
I actually think with the way teams have been overpaying for pitching as of late, that he can get something like a 3/30 on the open market, especially when the Mets and Angels exist and are known for giving out these types of contracts even if the pitcher isn’t coming off their best year.
Any GM that gives this guy $30 mil should be fired on the spot
Only $10 million a year isn’t awful for a guy who can be a solid #4 starter. Potentially a solid #3 starter if he figures out what he was doing in the first half of 2021. But I definitley wouldn’t go three years. Maybe one year deal with an option.
Everyone who watched him pitch knows exactly what he was doing in the 1st half, that didn’t work in the 2nd half.
It was sticky stuff on the ball. . .
That would be more accurate. $10MM. Maybe with incentives m and a team option.
Enter an owner that will demand the GM do something they should be fired on the spot (if the GM actually made the decision).
That’s usually how those horrendous deals work — not always, mind you, but usually.
He’ll get 3 yrs $35M or go back to Japan. And he’s a Boras client.
RANGERS. THIS IS YOUR 3 YEAR DEAL GUY.
I have no idea why he opted out, but this is shocking and I’m 100% down for it.
As a Mariner fan(and probably speaking for the other AL West teams), I 100 percent support this idea.
I remember when the Mariners signed him and Mariner fans were all over this with superlatives in the comment section coming off as if Jerry Dipoto had gotten them a cross between Clayton Kershaw and Sandy Koufax (and there I was stating that Japanese League pitchers rarely translated into MLB).
Think maybe Artie Moreno forced him ‘ole Jer into it?
Samuel, I remember that very well.
I was not among those fans cheering the thing, because I always look askance at pitchers coming from Japan or anywhere else in Asia.
I was hopeful, but had to be convinced.
And then I had to be convinced he could keep it up for a while.
Now, all I can do is wish him well.
But about your last line, I would have to have it explained to me how Moreno could get Dipoto to do anything at all.
I cheered it because I thought it was a good move. Kikuchi proved to be a very bad pitcher. But not upset that Dipoto signed him at all. In no way did Kikuchi hinder the rebuild, and now he’s completely off the books so he won’t take up any room moving forward.
You should really be a GM
Meh. You could say that about any player for any amount of money on a 4 year deal then. “He didn’t hinder our 5yr rebuild, and now he’s off the books.”
Dipoto has a low bar from fans sometimes.
Yeah. He was definitely over-praised by fans as his NPB background wasn’t super electric. He had (and still has) a higher ceiling than he’s shown, for sure, but remotely close to what the Homers decided to convince themselves of. But those were the Homers, after all.
Projection systems quite clearly placed him above say… Kei Igawa and Hideki Irabu. They also quite clearly placed him below Nomo, Matsuzaka (both of whom weren’t failures to transition, but who rather did well and then got hurt), and Ohtani
That said, much of the perceived flop-ness of Kikuchi comes from changes he’s made since coming over. When he arrived, he threw 92 and while projections had his likely area better than he was, they weren’t that much higher. If he ended up Iwakuma or Kuroda-level quality, that would have been a big surprise (and made him by far the best MLB LHP out of Japan in history).
He came into 2021 a pitcher with very, very different potential than he was in 2019. People knew that and his ERA in the shortened 2020 was below what it should have been. There was earnest “sleeper” upside for him that hasn’t gone completely away
1. He wasn’t on a 4-year deal. It was, in essence, a 3-year deal with a player option. Were he on a 4-year deal, this conversation couldn’t have possibly existed (the context of him not accepting the player option never occurring)
2. I believe the appropriate phrase is more that he’s given some slack. After all, in a rebuild/ “reload” like Dipoto started in 2018, the general preference in FA signings will be for high-value guys (paying notably less than the going price for the players’ quality), low-risk-high-reward guys. Kikuchi very comfortably fit into that low-risk-high-reward category. He was a pitcher entering his prime years coming over from the NPB and can be netted for 3y/ $43M. His projections say he will likely be a #3-quality SP, but could easily be a #4 or a #2.
That was a very team-friendly deal given the normal market for SP. 28-year-old SPs with good stuff, but bad results have been getting more than that every year for 10 years — and have outperformed it.
Jays?
Maybe pete can work his magic on kikuchi like he did with ray and matz
I think that the Blue Jays should not sign Kikuchi because he really struggled after the ban on sticky stuff.
Two issues with the “it was the sticky stuff!” implication.
1. Foreign substance enforcement began on June 21. Kikuchi’s spin rate dropped several weeks prior (3-4 weeks prior to be more precise).
2. While league-wide numbers showed clear drop in spin rate when separated before-6/21 and after 6/21 (in even the first week!), there was little-to-no league-wide change in control metrics (K%, BB%, etc.). Kikuchi’s control declined significantly — and didn’t start until August (more than a month after enforcement began).
While there are several instances in which a player’s mid-2021 decline can likely be due to the enforcement of foreign substances bans, I don’t see Kikuchi as one of them.
Giants were interested in him when he was originally a FA and I feel like his peripherals are something they’ll be intrigued with again this offseason.
I think not. Go check his statcast page. It is a major yikes….
he seems like someone worth taking a shot on a 1-2 year deal for about 18-20 million tops. He hasn’t been great since coming to MLB.
Definitely time for the Kikuchi experiment to end in Seattle. I don’t think it is due to any lack of effort on his part, and while he is good at times, he has simply been too inconsistent, too unreliable. I wish him all the best, and count me in as a member of the celebratory conga line undoubtedly forming at T-mobile Park right about now.
A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one!
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Dude SUCKS
With how crowded the free agent market is with starting pitchers, I don’t see any team taking more than a one year flyer on him. I see him doing one of three things: taking a one year flyer with a rebuilding club like the Pirates, Orioles, Nationals, or Rangers to hopefully figure out what he was doing in the first half of this past season, go back to Japan, or sign with the Rays and become the ace he was overseas.
It’s a fair point about the crowded market. My guess on his logic is one of three possibilities:
1. He’s going for a flier… that just might pay even a little more that his 1y/ $13M option. He may even have an under-the-table blessing from the M’s that he can pursue it with that option existing as a fall-back.
2.. He wants some kind of long…er…ish term deal. Perhaps someone might go 2y/ $20. Maybe even the Mariners might do that.
3. He’s going back to Japan. He would only the most recent former-NPB-star Mariner to opt-out of US money to save some face.
Move along, Perry. Nothing to see here.
Mets
I still think he could be good but 4/66 plus what’s owed to the lions would have been too much. The idea of a 1 year 13 mil sounded like a good way to give him one more chance but he could probably get 2/25 or 3/30 so can’t blame him even if it could be a mistake in the end.
It would be interesting to know if Dipoto used those reports to bet that he could keep Kikuchi around on the cheap/short, or whether there was no interest regardless of the player option outcome. Considering top SPs are now $25-35M per, Kikuchi (based on 2021) was not going to be super pricey either way.
I can only assume he wants to go home, because there’s no chance in hell he’s getting close to that AAV this offseason.
This is outstanding news, adds another SP to the FA market for other teams to bid on and the M’s have $13M today they didn’t have yesterday. Also, the article is incorrect. The M’s 2022 payroll stands around $35-37M, Kyle Seager’s $20M is amongst the $57M 2022 payroll and he gone. It stands to reason the M’s move in the neighborhood of $150M or more in 2022 payroll after 2018 payroll of $173M. Should be a fun off-season even with the CBA conclusion
Good luck Mr. K in even getting a one year deal…..
I wonder if it’s mostly just insurance that he can sign with an NPB team if MLB heads in the direction of a labor stoppage. $13m is decent money but if 40% of the season gets wiped out, he could do better in a league that is actually playing.
I always imagine his name in the old “Seruchi” jeans commercial song.
Maybe he just wants to go to another team that can help him be a better pitcher, go to a team that wants his services. After the Kyle seager bs and then not exercising the team option maybe he took that as a let down from the organization. Change of scenery and better coaching could be what he is looking for lots of these foreign players aren’t truly concerned about the money they wanna compete and win.
Maybe he just sucks.
Miracles do happen!
What a gift he’s given to the Mariners! They need to send him a fruit basket or something. 13mm off the books and a slot freed up. This is a massive win to start the off season.
Apparently Beggars can be Choosers
Seems pretty odd for him to do this …
For wanting to leave a team for skipping him in the rotation during a playoff run because they have no faith in him? He seen the writing on the wall. He isn’t wanted.
Should/could Seattle off a QO?
absolutly not!!!
At the end of the season the mariners opted to use Tyler Anderson in Kikuchis spot of the rotation…hence showing him that they didn’t have faith in his abilities to pitch well enough to start the game. I don’t blame him for declining the player option. He may not get more money on the open market…but if he is picked up by another team…then he’s hoping to be able to start…I wish him nothing but success in his future
What a great start to the off-season for the Mariners! I’m pumped for this. Bye bye!!!
Japanese people are honourable and respectful people. He saw that they probably didn’t want him and doesn’t want to play for a club where he isn’t wanted, so he will have options, even if it is not in MLB. It’s not always about the money, and for some players it isn’t.
Or that mid season demotion might have had something to do with it.
Thats basically the point he was making
That he sucked and lost his starting job? And that’s a slight to him?
When did mid-September become midseason?
He might be able to get a multi-year deal, but I don’t see how he gets anywhere near $13M a year. This looks like a big mistake to me.