Kato joins Tigers

After a mediocre season with the BayStars and a long tryout relief pitcher Kosuke Kato was signed by Tigers and will wear No. 63. The rationale behind this signing is that he is a left hander but with only two good years out of an undistinguished career the impression is that this is another waste of money by a clueless management.

If they want a left hander, they should pursue Okajima more, which is the latest rumor. He was awful last year, but hopefully this was just because of injury and he still has something left. Since he's from Kyoto, would be nice to see him retire in a Tigers uniform.

About Okajima, the following quote has been attributed to one Tigers excutive:
"But we're not gung-ho about it. We're not going to sign him at all costs."
Do things like this get translated poorly or do Tigers executives really make such dumb comments?

It could be true (and yes there are executives just like that) or it could be invented by the newspaper for a story. The latter is quite common over here (reference Yakult and Cyberagent). It might even be a mistranslation - I haven't seen the Japanese so I can't comment.

Here's the original from the Japan Times:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/sb20101204j1.html
The executive was Numazawa. I agree with his opinion that they don't want to get into a bidding war with a MLB team, but the rest of the quote seems like a silly thing to say if you seriously want a player to join your team.