Author: charliewilmoth

The first time, I turned it down. I finished the '02 season with Texas, and pitched pretty well, outside of my usual walks being too high. Everything else was pretty good. And I had a choice to either go to Japan for a salary of a little over $500K, or sign back with Texas, and if I made the team I would have been making about that same salary. There was nothing guaranteed, [and] the money to go to Japan was guaranteed. But the opportunity [with the Rangers] looked good.

That was a tough decision for me. And probably a month into the season, I regretted it. It was actually really bad for me [with] Texas, probably the worst I ever pitched in the beginning of that '03 season, and then [I] sat in Triple-A the rest of the year and probably made $100K total for the year. I could have made five or six times that going to Japan. When you get on the cusp — I was probably 30 at the time — when you're not sticking in the big leagues, or you're not getting that opportunity, but guaranteed money comes up in Japan, it's really difficult.

The second time around for me, in '06, it was a no-brainer. I spent the entire season in Triple-A. I was 33 years old. I couldn't wait for another opportunity to try to get over to Asia, because they're not easy to come by. As soon as it came, it was a really easy decision to go at that point in my career.

It's hard for guys. They feel like they're giving up on their dreams, giving up on being a big-leaguer. But that's not necessarily the case, especially now. Guys come back all the time. Guys go to Asia all the time. You always have that opportunity to come back, but if you don't have a guaranteed contract here in the states, and you have some really good guaranteed money to go over to Asia, I'd recommend taking it. Now, that's because I personally loved the experience over there. Not everybody does. It's not for everybody.

What's the most surprising about playing your first season in Japan?

The coaches. They're light years behind on sports psychology compared to where [US baseball is] these days. And even then, over the evolution of my career, when I first came up, there were no mental skills coaches, and there were by the end of my career. That became pretty common. I don't know about every team, but probably pretty close.

Over there, they're a good 20, 30 years behind. Expectations can be pretty unrealistic. That was tough. I had a couple very difficult coaches, and a couple instances where they were really, really tough on me, and it seemed pretty undeserv[ed].

You mean expectations in terms of your work ethic, or they wanted you to be a superstar, or what?

Just more on-the-field performance. They would say the wrong things. I remember my translator coming out with the pitching coach one time. I had just got done warming up. I was a reliever in Japan. And my pitching coach, through my translator, says to me, "Hey, I really need you to pitch perfect today, in this game." Of course, that's ridiculous. If I could pitch perfect, I wouldn't be in Japan.

The first time I got sent down to the [Japanese] minor leagues, they were really upset because I [allowed] a base hit to a left-handed hitter. He hit a line drive over the shortstop's head after I got ahead in, like, a 1-2 count. And they were really upset about it. At the time, my ERA was under one and a half, and I got sent to the minor leagues. And I was like, "This is crazy." I think I was probably in a more stringent coaching situation [with] the team that I was on. Not all the teams are like that. But mine definitely was.

How is playing in Korea different from playing in Japan?

Korean baseball, even though they're years behind as far as how long they've been playing the game, especially professionally, they have a little bit closer to an American style of baseball. They're a little bit bigger and a little bit stronger, and generally, as a culture, they're a little bit more aggressive. That definitely plays out on the baseball field. They're just behind. The country is obviously smaller, too. If they had the same population size and they had been playing the game as long, I tell people the Koreans would be better than the Japanese. You get a little bit more of an aggressive style of play. [In] Japanese baseball, [there's] a little bit more contact, a lot of running, not a lot of power. And I hate to use the phrase "small ball," but that is kind of how they play. They'll bunt in the first inning in Japan, where you won't necessarily see that in Korea.

Can you comment on Masahiro Tanaka's workload? How do you think that will affect him as he [adjusts] to the Major Leagues?

I'm not too worried about him. [Yu] Darvish was a guy who wanted to throw a complete game every single time he went out there, [and] he didn't care how many pitches it took. I never worried about it for him. He's now at that two-year mark that seems to be the mark where you have to keep an eye on guys. That's about the time when Daisuke [Matsuzaka] started to struggle and eventually got hurt. I think Darvish is a little bit different because of his body type [and] how strong he is, and it seems like the Texas Rangers have done a pretty good job of keeping an eye on that.

I'm not worried about it, as long as [Tanaka] gets in a situation with a team that's aware of that. If he's on a six- or seven-year deal, you've got to treat it like you're in it for the long haul. He's a pretty strong kid. I know people get worried and they see the 160 pitches, and he comes back and [pitches in] relief the next day. I've done that in college before. We've gotten smarter about pitch counts, but I remember throwing 155 pitches in a game and then coming in in relief.

The big thing, when he gets here, is the workload away from games. The pitch counts in bullpens are [what] always blew me away. Tsuyoshi Wada was a teammate of mine in Japan. He's a smaller guy, doesn't throw as hard. He was a guy I was worried about. He threw a 247-pitch bullpen in spring training one year, and I remember sitting there and watching the end of it. It was ridiculous. He was exhausted. And he wasn't even doing anything productive.

But there was always such a pride factor in how many pitches they would throw in spring training. The team that I played for, it would be on the front page of the newspaper, the total number of pitches guys threw in practice. And we just had this first-round draft pick, this guy coming out of college, and he basically had to be first, and he was. That, to me, worries me more than [Tanaka's] actual game usage. There's an adjustment for those guys coming over, especially going to the five-day rotation.

Generally, in that culture, they think completely the opposite of the way we do, in the sense that we'll say, "Get quality work in over quantity." Leo Mazzone was big on that. Just get what you have to do done, make it count, do it well, and get out of here. Over there, it's completely the opposite. It's, "How long were you working? Whether or not you're dead tired and the quality of your reps is not good anymore doesn't matter. Just keep doing it." It's more about the practice in between, which I think [Japanese pitchers transitioning to the US] will love [once they change to the US system]. It takes a little while, because there's a mental adjustment for them. But for the most part, I think they end up liking it that way. But you do have to sell them on it a little bit.

You never know. But I wouldn't be too concerned about [the innings]. If anything, his career will last longer by coming here. [There's] certainly a much better chance that he [wouldn't have lasted], had he stayed in Japan for the bulk of his career.

Was that a concern you had when you were over there?

No, I didn't have to worry about it too much. They let us do our thing. I remember spring training my first year with the [Fukuoka SoftBank] Hawks, say practice would start at 9:00. The foreign guys, especially the pitchers, could get out of there by 1:00. So we were pretty much on a normal schedule. Japanese guys would be coming back to the hotel [at] 7:00 at night still in their uniforms. It's all about the quantity and not necessarily the quality. They would just work those guys to the bone. I felt terrible for them, especially the pitchers.

I watched a teammate of mine throw a 150-pitch bullpen in spring training, which is way too many, and then come back the next day and throw ten minutes of live batting practice. And I said, "What are you doing, man? Do you realize the wear and tear on your arm?" And he was joking with me, he said, "Oh no, I've got Japanese power and Japanese soul." It's the back-to-back stuff, and doing stuff while you're already fatigued, which is when your risk of injury goes up. He ended up having a cast from his elbow to almost his shoulder for, like, three or four months. That, to me, is the bigger concern. Not so much the pitch count during the game. I know that's a big deal now, and I understand why, and I'm not saying I'm against it. But it's more of the other work that goes into it.